In a deeply personal and reflective note, Avinash Kaul, CEO (Broadcasting and Publishing) of Network18, announced his departure from the company after nearly 12 years, choosing to mark the moment not with corporate milestones, but with gratitude for those often unseen. “They packed my parachute. Every single day,” he wrote yesterday in a LinkedIn post, setting the tone for a message that turned the spotlight firmly away from boardrooms and onto the quiet, constant contributors who shaped his journey.

The words of Kaul — who served as the CEO- Broadcast & Publishing at Network18, while doubling up as MD of A+E Networks|TV18 — carried a rare tenderness as he recalled the everyday presence of support staff: “the security guard who greeted me every morning,” “the fleet staff who drove me to airports and back” and “the housekeeping teams who kept our offices… clean, steady and human.”

In calling them out, he underlined a truth often overlooked in high-powered industries: that success is built on invisible effort. “You packed my parachute. Every day. Without fanfare, recognition, or ever asking for it,” he wrote, giving voice to a gratitude that felt both intimate and expansive.

Turning to his colleagues across editorial and business functions, Kaul struck a balance between candour and encouragement. To content teams, he issued a powerful reminder of responsibility: “Keep being custodians of trust for 700 million people. That is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.”  For those in revenue and ratings, he acknowledged his own intensity, admitting he may have seemed “demanding, relentless, perhaps impossible to satisfy”, but insisted it stemmed from a belief in their untapped strength.

His leadership philosophy came through in simple but striking imagery. Growth, he said, was never meant to come “through politics… or by cutting someone else down,” but “the way mountains are climbed — on your own strength, one honest step at a time.”

It was a reflection of a journey that saw him expand his role from managing three channels to overseeing a vast network of 20 channels, alongside a publishing business and a growing connected TV footprint— achievements he was quick to attribute not to himself, but to “4,000 people who showed up, every day.”

Yet, even at this moment of closure, Kaul’s gaze remained fixed firmly ahead. “Something is being built,” he hinted, describing his next move not as a leap into the unknown, but as a carefully prepared ascent — “Not out of restlessness. Out of readiness.” The metaphor of mountains threaded through his message, culminating in a quiet but powerful line: “The summit was never the goal. It was just the view from where the next path begins.”

As he signed off, Kaul left behind more than a record of professional success — he offered a philosophy of work rooted in humility, resilience, and shared effort. “The next mountain is calling,” he wrote, closing a chapter not with finality, but with anticipation, and a sense that the climb, in many ways, has only just begun.