MxMIndia

Tag: Hindustan Times

  • Tibrewal is set to join as Business Head, South & West and Ramakrishnan has joined as the Head of Marketing

    Pankaj Tibrewal and Rajesh Ramakrishnan join HT

    By A Correspondent

     

    Mr Pankaj Tibrewal is set to take over from Mr Salil Sadanandan as Business Head, South & West, HT Media Group. Mr Sadanandan joined HT Media in May 2008, and led from the front. Today the Mumbai edition, in a highly competitive market, is a strong and clear No 2 in readership as well as in advertising volumes.

     

    Rajiv Verma, Group CEO, HT Media Group, said: “It’s never easy to let go of such passionate leaders but it’s only fair that a leader who has contributed so much to our enterprise must be enabled with this opportunity.”

     

    Mr Tibrewal comes to HT Media from the Future Group where he was the COO and Business Head for Pantaloons. At Pantaloons, Mr Tibrewal established global best practices in retail and implemented a new customer-first strategy, and, under his leadership, Pantaloons achieved an annual growth of 30-35%. Prior to the Future Group, Mr Tibrewal worked with McKinsey and Company in their Chicago office. Previous to this, he was an entrepreneur.

     

    Mr Tibrewal holds an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at the Northwestern University and an MS in manufacturing systems from the University of Texas at Austin. Mr Tibrewal’s wife, Pallavi, also an MBA from Kellogg, works for Disney, heading heir accessories & footwear licensing.

     

    Mr Tibrewal will be reporting to the Rajiv Verma in his new endeavour.

     

    Mr Rajesh Ramakrishnan has also joined Hindustan Times as the Head of Marketing. Mr Ramakrishnan will initially be responsible for the marketing of the Hindustan Times brand in the North and the East.

     

    Mr Ramakrishnan is an alumnus of BITS Pilani and XLRI Jamshedpur, and has over 17 years of experience in Sales and Marketing across companies like Reckitt Benckiser, Marico and Pepsico. He has worked on a diverse set of brands including Cherry Blossom, Kurkure and Quaker. His last assignment was Head, Global Marketing with Apollo Tyres.

     

    Commenting on his joining, Shantanu Bhanja, VP Marketing, HT Media, said: “Mr Ramakrishnan combines a strong sense of result-orientation with an ability to bring the best out of people. He will bring exceptional Marketing depth to our biggest Brand and key markets”

     

    Apart from being a marketeer, Mr Ramakrishnan is also a passionate photographer whose work has been exhibited, as also published in several magazines and newspapers. He also conceptualized and shot two calendars over the last two years, with prominent celebrities, in support of NGOs.

     

    Mr Ramakrishnan’s wife Nirupama Subramanian is a Corporate Trainer and also the author of the best selling novel Keep the Change.

     

    Mr Ramakrishnan will report to Shantanu Bhanja, and consequent to this, Diptakirti Chaudhuri, Marketing Head, HT Delhi.

     

     

  • The ninth edition of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, set to take place on December 2-3 in New Delhi, will see a lineup of big names speaking on the theme of 'Keeping Pace with a Changing World'.

    Power-packed sessions at HT Leadership Summit

    By A Correspondent

     

    Leaders from around the world will congregate in the country’s capital, as the ninth edition of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit takes place on December 2-3, 2011 in New Delhi. The theme of the summit this year is ‘Keeping Pace with a Changing World’.

     

    On the occasion, Sanjoy Narayan, Editor in Chief, Hindustan Times, said, “In modern India, change is constant. In the last two decades, it is said, India has changed a lot. So has the world around us… The changes that India faces are, thus, on several fronts – some domestic, others global. And all of these changes throw up for India the challenge of keeping pace with them. It is with this in mind that the 9th edition of the annual Hindustan Times’ Leadership Summit this year offers a platform for debating these issues, to which there are, of course, no easy answers.”

     

    The annual summit has become a powerful forum bringing together leaders from all walks of life and encouraging interaction and debate on the burning issues of the moment. The inaugural session at the summit will be that of Pranab Mukherjee who will share his thoughts on the opportunities and challenges facing India.

     

    It will be followed by an innovative session on education trends from around the world – ‘The Education Prism: Global Perspectives’. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission of India, Dr John A Quelche CBE, Distinguished Professor of International Management, Vice President and Dean, CEIBS and Gregory W Cappelli, Co-CEO, Apollo Group and Chairman, Apollo Global, will be speaking at this session. The Keynote Address of the day will be given by Tun Dr Mahathir Bin Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia, and he will be speaking about ‘The Challenges of Change in the 21st Century’.

     

    The other speakers on day one will be Kaushik Basu and Norman Pearlstine, Chief Content Officer, Bloomberg LP, who will be discussing the global economic crisis; husband-wife team Carol and Ken Adelman, who make up Movers & Shakespeares, will be sharing management lessons from Shakespeare’s plays in a repeat of their hugely successful session from the World Economic Forum at Davos earlier this year.

     

    The highly anticipated penultimate session of the day will see economics maverick Dr Steven Levitt, author of the popular Freakonomics books and professor at the University of Chicago, share his unique perspective in a session entitled ‘Unconventional Thinking for an Unpredictable World’.

     

    The closing session on the first day will look at the hot-button topic of the Arab Summer and will see Dr Paul Salem, Director, Carnegie Middle East Center and Emile Hokayem, Senior Fellow for Regional Security, The Internal Institute for Strategic Studies, discussing its causes and consequences.

     

    The second day of the summit will start with the keynote address by LK Advani, who will share his views on ‘India’s Yatra into the Future’. Mr Advani’s session will be followed by a special session led by the former Prime Ministers of Australia and Spain – John Howard and Jose Maria Aznar – on the recent social and economic upheavals around the globe.

     

    Actor-director Farhan Akthar and actor Vidya Balan will chat with Vir Sanghvi in the popular Hindi Film Industry session.

     

    Other speakers on day two are Mehbooba Mufti, President, Jammu and Kashmir Prople’s Democratic Party, Asfandyar Wali Khan, President, Awami National Party, Pakistan and Dr Farooq Abdullah, Minister of New and Renewable Energy, in a session titled ‘Settling Disputes for a Common Cause’.

     

    Julian Assange, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Wikileaks, will be addressing the delegates via video on the second day.

     

    The final session of the summit will be addressed by Chief Ministers Sheila Dixit (Delhi), Prithviraj Chavan (Maharashtra) and Dr Raman Singh (Chattisgarh), who will speak about the connection between Personality Power and Good Governance.

     

    The sessions will be chaired by eminent leaders of the media world such as Rajdeep Sardesai, Sagarika Ghose, Suhasini Haidar, Karan Thapar, Vir Sanghvi and Sanjoy Narayan.

     

    The Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2011 is guaranteed to bring a fresh new perspective on the critical issues and problems we find ourselves facing today. By leveraging the power of debate and discussion, this ninth edition of the Summit will tackle the challenges of change with insight and clarity.

  • Hindustan Times is celebrating ‘100 years of New Delhi’ and has launched several campaigns and initiatives to propel the celebrations.

    HT celebrating 100 years of Delhi, all year long

    By Akash Raha

    This year Hindustan Times is celebrating ‘100 years of New Delhi’. It has launched several campaigns and initiatives to propel the celebrations further. The current campaign comes under HT’s already existing property named ‘I love Delhi’, which had launched extensive campaigns and initiatives last year, and the stress continues to grow. Currently, Hindustan Times is the largest English daily in Delhi, according to IRS.

    Speaking about this initiative Mr Diptakirti Chaudhuri, AVP – Marketing, Hindustan Times said, “Since we have continued to build our lead over our competitors in Delhi and NCR, we are also attempting to build up a close relationship to the city we cater to. Actually, we are inextricably linked to them… Therefore, each year we pick up a theme of relevance and deal with it holistically. Our main aim and idea is to get the consumers involved.”

    The campaigns and initiatives include Tshirt designing contest, mall activation, reader’s promo, movie screening, film festivals, school quizzes (amongst over 3000 odd kids), painting competition in schools etcetera. The response to these activations were phenomenal as they got over 1700 Tshirt designs, not to mention, 20-25 excellent 100 second movies for ‘Capture 100 years of magic in 100 seconds’. Also, 100 icons of New Delhi (from Rashtrapati Bhawan to India Gate to Karims) were recognized and profiled.

    When asked how this is the 100years of Delhi, Mr Chaudhuri explained, “even though Delhi is the capital of India, no one celebrates its anniversaries as it doesn’t have a specific date of creation like many other cities.” Yet, it is said that the foundation of the city was laid sometime in the year 1911 and planned by British architects Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Herbert Baker.

    The concept and campaign was developed internally. Mr Chaudhuri said that the marketing concept emanated from an editorial idea which was celebrating the ‘100 years of New Delhi’ and was thereafter transposed to their marketing sphere too.

  • Hindustan Times has been constantly building into the youth market with several initiatives and campaigns for the young.

    HT focuses campus appeal on youth

    By Akash Raha

    Hindustan Times has been constantly building into the youth market with several initiatives and campaigns for the young. HT draws a yearlong plan to activate all these events. MxM India spoke to Mr Diptakirti Chaudhuri, AVP – Marketing, Hindustan Times to learn more about this stress.

    The initiative follows the trajectory of a youth just out of school and entering the college. HT follows his/her campus journey all year round. It begins with Campus Calling where it tells the youth about the various opportunities to get into educational institutions and imparts counselling. Thereafter there are other initiatives like Fresh on Campus, Mission MBA, Youth Nexus, Study Abroad, Career Quotient and College Fests. Currently, Mission MBA is on, on full swing since the CAT exams are not too far away. In the coming months, there will be workshops and group discussions on how to crack the CAT. Also, Freshen Campus, which includes organising freshers’ parties across campuses, is currently on.

     

    Offerings for the young

    HT carries the more serious campus related issues in HT Education and the fun events in campus on HT City. Also, there is HT Edge a campus supplement especially designed for the youth. It is a 12-page newspaper which was launched a year back especially for especially for the youth. It is priced at Re 1 and is distributed across colleges and homes.

    Speaking about campuses Mr Chaudhuri said, “Campus is very important to us and we lay special thrust on doing well there as these are the people who write the future of our nation. We have observed that in the campus people don’t find the regular newspaper useful enough or cool enough. They are tired of reading about politics and corruption. Hence, we have revamped our content to give them exactly what they want to read.”

    He went on to say. “These days, our educational supplements include a lot of non-normative career options, such as those for RJs, VJs, chefs etc. We have done studies and surveys to get to know that the youth of today are moving away from the conventional professions of being a doctor, engineer, CA etc. We try to bridge such a gap.”

    Apart from the offering for college going students, HT also has HT Next for school going students. The newspaper is distributed to around 1,400 schools in Delhi region.

    When asked how they were leveraging their initiatives and campaigns on campuses further, Mr Chaudhuri said that online was their biggest medium to take the cause of the campus forward. The Facebook page (www.facebook.com/campuscalling) has over one lakh members and sees a lot of interaction amongst peers, where the monitoring (according to HT) is minimal.

    The initiative to help youth and students is a pan-India activity, with concepts and ideas developed in-house. Considering that India is only getting younger as a substantial part of the population is below the age of 25, the initiative is certainly going to reap rich dividends for HT for a sustained period of time.