Tag: MxM3

By Alok Kapuria

It’s been an exhilarating journey so far. When I first heard about the proposition of MxMIndia, it was just a concept. Even the name wasn’t finalised. So, as I look back at the baby steps we took to get this far, there is a great sense of accomplishment.

Almost everything in a start-up can be a challenge. From something as critical as the broadband connectivity snapping to working without any office help for over two months. And then, of course, revenue targets which look very easy-to-achieve when you see them on a spreadsheet.

While I was confident of the product, I was not sure how the industry would take it. Ethics and such sound very good, but the reality at the ground level is different. Or so I thought. But with a strict code of ethics leaving one with no opportunity to compromise on editorial values, I think my job has been made simpler. It is vital for trade publications to engage people in the industry, but not at the cost of selling one’s soul.

As someone who moved to Mumbai, starry eyed and with a desire to make it big, I know how significant a milestone a hundred days is. I am happy that I am part of this one.

I thank our advertisers for trusting us from Day 1 and giving us their business support. Many friends in the industry share that our content offers them a different experience and helps them be better informed. It will be our endeavour to bring innovative properties in which our advertisers see ROI and our readers sees value. I would say the journey has just begun.

By Kishor Kate

When I came for the job interview at MxM near October end for the position of Office Operations and Support, I was clearly told that there’s a clear growth path ahead of me… and it’s in my hands how I define the way my job here shapes up. I generally run around for odd jobs in the office and supporting everyone in their work. But it has never been a bad experience. The people are friendly and always nice.  I have been encouraged to learn. The boss encouraged me to type and work on the computer. I am enjoying my work here. Yes, there are days when the work hours are long and I have to wait in the office till very late. But MxM is a startup, and it is a small and cozy setting. The experience of working in a office like MxM is definitely different than working in a regular office. The atmostphere here is fun.

By Tuhina Anand

We started MxMIndia with a vision to provide our readers something more than the usual reporting that is done in this sector. The last 100 days have been a learning experience, with our quest to provide refreshing content to our readers thus pushing ourselves a little bit more to give that extra bit. It would have been no fun if we had churned out run-of-the-mill stuff day in and day out. As challenging as this might be, it has been no less than a roller-coaster ride.

The biggest challenge was when we were working on our launch edition – September 7, 2011. The site was not launched and we had to approach the industry for news, views, interviews and case studies so that we could have all our sections going on the day of the launch. It was no mean task to have engaged the industry even before our launch and we were appreciated by many for our endeavour.

But we managed to do this, all thanks to the experienced team that we have at MxMIndiawho do not shy away from pushing the boundaries.

There was anticipation and palpable excitement on the day we launched. I remember comparing notes on the response we got from the industry. Since that first day, we have done many remarkable stories that have made the industry recognize us even in such a short period of time.

I also remember once, for our daily segment that we call Anchor, we were looking for a marketer who could write for us. Ajay Kakar, CMO – Financial Services at Aditya Birla Group wrote a piece for us on ‘8 indications when you know it’s time to bid goodbye to your agency’. Kakar ensured that he sent his piece, even though it was late in the night.

The journey has just begun. There would be many more 100s where we, as a team, will do our best to give the best in terms of reports and views to the industry.

By Shruti Pushkarna

MxM India completes its 100 days today, on February 1. It feels like yesterday when I was out in the market, on the internet, making endless phone calls to zero in on the best buy for our video coverage. This would include a high definition camera, a tripod, a microphone and other accessories. After much running around (including the swarmed streets of Chandni Chowk), we finally bought a Kodak zi8 (http://store.kodak.com/store/ekconsus/en_US/pd/Zi8_Pocket_Video_Camera/productID.156585800).

Much to my surprise at every event I covered with this camera, or any interview I recorded on it, my audience was awestruck with the compact equipment MxM team moved around with. Many mistook it for a phone, and in every break, be it over a cup of coffee or over lunch, I would be greeted with inquisitive fellas wanting to know more about the camera. And yes I would reiterate to each one of them that we shoot ‘on-air’ quality, full HD!

I must confess, one idea that I borrowed from my past experience as a TV producer, was the decision to buy a gun mic. When you are at an event which is crowded with Television crews with their ‘heavy-duty’ equipment, the one thing that’s common between us and them is the good old gun mic. Believe you me, it puts you in line with the TV wallahs. Of course it’s handy at the same time. You just have to be clever enough to push your mic and slick camera through the aggressive TV crews and get your ‘bites’ for the day. One of my recent experiences being getting sound bites from the DoT Secretary, R Chandrashekar, at thE 6th India Digital Summit, when all TV journos and cameramen ‘gheraoed’ him.

Enough tech talk, let’s move on to content. Among the events I covered in the last 100 days, the two big ones that stood out most in terms of video coverage were, the 38^th FIPP World Magazine Congress (WMC) and AdAsia 2011. At WMC, we were lucky enough to get some great exclusive video chats with the FIPP President & CEO, Chris Llewellyn, AIM President and Worldwide Media CEO, Tarun Rai, Cybermedia Chairman, Pradeep Gupta, Kallie Purie, COO, India Today Digital and also members of the Organizing Committee, India Today Group CEO, Ashish Bagga being one of them. And before the conference commenced, on the launch of the event, I was lucky to be close enough to capture the King Khan doing his ‘chhammak challo’! That was my first to have got over a 2000 views within no time at all!

At AdAsia again, we were fortunate to get all the ‘gurus’ of the ad world interact one-on-one with us. Piyush Pandey of Ogilvy & Mather, Prasoon Joshi of McCann, Michael Roth, CEO, Interpublic, Tom Doctoroff of JWT China, Ravi Deshpande of Contract India, CEO of BBDO in Asia, Middle East & Africa, Chris Thomas, and many more engaged with us in candid video interviews. Here again, we stood in line with the usual suspects of the TV world.

Apart from events’ coverage, we had an early exclusive with Reckitt Benckiser’s Chander Mohan Sethi. Here too I struggled to make space with pushy TV crews but finally managed to get the desired answers.

But what remains my personal favourite, was my interaction with whom I call the epitome of broadcast journalism, Mark Tully. He was candid, honest, precise. His love and belief in broadcast journalism did not deter him from highlighting the follies of the trade. He didn’t seem angry at what TV journalism looks like in the country today, he only seemed concerned. As a man who likes to call himself ‘a British who is much influenced by India’, his worry for issues, social and political, came through in almost all his responses pertaining to India’s developmental story. As a TV producer myself, I exchanged many stories with him off the camera, and some of them seemed similar to the ones he narrated to me from his times. For me it turned out to be quite a unique and enlightening discussion on ‘media’.

There is so much more that I have experienced in these 100 days as part of team MxM, be it interviewing the likes of Vinod Mehta and Mark Tully or witnessing a new avatar of Arnab Goswami giggling like a school boy to Vinod Mehta’s jokes at the launch of the latter’s memoirs.

But as the rhyme goes, ‘100 days, 100 days, so clap and sway and say hurray’!

By Shubhangi Mehta

Waking up on wintry mornings at 8.30 am, getting out of my cozy bed, freshening up and entering the MxM India office (my study) where my laptop is my colleague and my Blackberry is the boss’s messenger. Strange eh? Well, this is precisely my life at MxM India, and if not every day, at least most days I have been in absolute high spirits.

To be very honest, when I joined MxMIndia, I wasn’t really sure of the future, neither mine nor MxM’s but that’s where the ecstasy was and more so, it was the trust of the MxM team that I was good enough to do the job.

The past four months have been a mixed bag for me in terms of highs and lows just like a regular journalist working anywhere, but what makes it different to be at MxM is that here ‘the highs’ as well as ‘the lows’ are treated like a ‘comma’ and never a ‘full stop’.

Whenever we work in a company, it becomes a second family for us but working with MxM made me realise that this place has actually become like a family for me as I am a part of the foundation team.

What makes me feel proud is that despite the challenges we have managed to do some high-quality work, be it the breaking news or the exclusive news of agencies bagging businesses or the fun of doing the ‘Big stories’, we do it all here at MxM.

It is after joining MxM, I felt personally responsible for the misses on my site. If a story on my site is appreciated, it makes me feel content, no matter whoever’s by line that story has.

The reason which makes the working experience different at MxMIndia is that each of us is responsible for his/her work. We are all colleagues here and the attitude of pushing someone else behind in order to accomplish one’s own goals is nowhere to be seen.

No doubt, the same routine everyday makes life seem a little monotonous. But, what the hell? Every work becomes monotonous in a while, it’s the way we do that work which makes a difference.

In the past year, I had often questioned myself many times if this is what I want to do in life. Is journalism something I want to continue with? Is advertising the beat I enjoy writing on? Well, working with MxM I have realised that I need to stop ‘trying’ to fit in, this is something I was born to do, because even if I commit mistakes it simply means I am trying. ‘Try and don’t give up’ is what MxM has taught me.