MxMIndia

Tag: Ritu Kapur

  • Quintillion Media, a digital media company, was co-founded by Network 18 founder Raghav Bahl and his wife Ritu Kapur

    Barkha Dutt now partners with Quint

    By A Correspondent

     

    Barkha Dutt

    Senior journalist Barkha Dutt, who left NDTV earlier this month, has partnered with The Quint to cover the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls. On The Road with Barkha will map the UP elections and bring extensive ground reports from the state.

     

    “I am really excited to collaborate with The Quint on this, and push the boundaries of this new and exciting digital medium,” said Dutt.

     

    Quintillion Media, a digital media company, was co-founded by Network 18 founder Raghav Bahl and his wife Ritu Kapur.“The combination of Barkha Dutt and The Quint is a powerful one. It will bring a completely new brand of journalism and media experience to India’s increasingly sophisticated digital consumer. This combination of immersive journalistic storytelling, social media and the interactive user will redefine this space,” Kapur said.

     

  • Groundbreaking broadcast and digital partnership to create BloombergQuint

    Bloomberg partners Quint to announce latest venture

    By A Correspondent

     

    Bloomberg Media announced the formation of BloombergQuint, a new partnership in India with Quintillion Media, India’s digital news venture founded by serial entrepreneur Raghav Bahl. The partnership will cover broadcast, digital and live events across India, serving business and financial news to one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

     

    In a new agreement that commenced April 1, BloombergQuint will harness the unrivalled global resources of Bloomberg with Quintillion Media’s deep market experience to create a revamped business news channel and digital destination for India’s growing business audience.

     

    “At Bloomberg, we’ve set out to build the leading multi-platform global business and financial media company. Currently, almost half of our digital traffic comes from outside the United States and this figure continues to grow. Partnering with Quintillion Media in India is a game-changer for the country’s digital and broadcast media industries, and for Bloomberg Media globally as we take our investment to an exciting new phase,” said Justin B. Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Bloomberg Media. “It was clear when we met with Raghav that we shared a common vision to create India’s premier digitally-led multi-platform business media company.”

     

    Raghav Bahl, founder of Quintillion Media, said, “The combination of Bloomberg Media with Quintillion Media is a powerful one. It will bring a completely new brand of journalism and media experience to India’s increasingly sophisticated business consumer. We will deliver content via technology in a digital-first model that will redefine this space.”

     

    Raghav Bahl founded and scaled Network 18, India’s leading media group. Along with his wife, Ritu Kapur (CEO), he co-founded Quintillion Media in 2014, a digital media company.

     

    Parry Ravindranathan, Managing Director, Bloomberg Media International, added, “Raghav really pioneered the business news genre in broadcast and digital in India. If you combine that with Bloomberg’s deep experience and global leadership in business and financial news and data, this is a powerful combination — especially at this moment when global interest in India is at an all-time high. This also comes at a fortuitous time when Bloomberg celebrates 20 years in India. We will continue to break new ground and deliver great content in Asia’s fastest growing market.”

     

    BloombergQuint plans to launch a new business channel, localized website and live events business in 2016, focusing on high-quality, market moving digital business news content for India’s business and financial professionals. The company has hired former CNBC-TV18 CEO Anil Uniyal and former CNBC-TV18 Executive Editor Menaka Doshi to serve as BloombergQuint’s CEO and Managing Editor respectively. Harsha Subramaniam, the Bloomberg Executive Producer looking after Bloomberg TV India for the past five years, will be overseeing the partnership for Bloomberg across platforms.

     

    “As the fastest growing major economy in the world, India is one of the most important stories we are covering in Asia. I’m glad we are partnering with Raghav and his team who have deep experience reporting on India for the past two decades,” said David Merritt, Executive Editor for Asia Pacific, Bloomberg News.

     

  • The Quint has championed several deeply impactful campaigns in its first year

    The Quint completes a successful year in India

    By A Correspondent

     

    Digital entity The Quint, has competed its first anniversary in India. The platform has looked at story telling through a smooth blend of video, audio, graphics and text, offering a modern, sharp take on the world. The Quint covers topics ranging from politics and entertainment, to sports, business, food, issues about women and LGBTQ and everything else that matters.

     

    The Quint has championed several deeply impactful campaigns in its first year on its platform that have helped it cinch its popularity with Indian content consumers. The ‘Buriladki’ poster gave it its first taste of going viral while attempting to break gender stereotypes in India. The Bihar elections were covered armed with a selfie stick and a smartphone, a unique first for The Quint, making it the first digital platform to do so.

     

    “In this exciting one year, we have experimented with content, formats, technology and different ways of engaging our readers meaningfully. Throughout this ride, we’ve broken news (and parameters) as well as our own expectations, but most importantly, we’ve broken the perception that only print or television can rule information,” said Ritu Kapur, CEO.

     

    Besides hard news, The Quint also does campaigns that are fun, fearless and feisty. One of its earliest campaigns #MakeOutInIndia encouraged Indians to talk about sex, break perceptions and clean out the cobwebs of hypocrisy. This Republic Day it started the #LetterToIndia campaign where everyone was invited to throw bouquets and brickbats in their own way. Everyone from Bollywood stars, politicians, social influencers, prominent voices from the film industry, theatre, educational institutions, LGBTQ rights activists, provided colour and dimension to a campaign that eventually took on a life of its own on social. The platform even got onto the #SayYesToWeed bandwagon, because it believes in questioning status quo and busting myths.

     

  • Over 3 million Facebook readers, several highly impactful campaigns & the launch of Instant Articles made it a year of many firsts

    The Quint completes impactful one-year run on Facebook

    By A Correspondent

     

    Leading digital content platform, The Quint, completed its first year on Facebook on January 9, 2016. First launched on the social media platform before its website was unveiled in March, The Quint, has had a good run in India. The platform enjoys over 3 million dedicated readers on Facebook having pioneered publishing concepts like Instant Articles, created calls-to-action and championed several meaningful and impactful campaigns through the innovative use of technology.

     

    Led by Raghav Bahl and Ritu Kapur, co-founders of Quintillion Media, The Quint on Facebook has made its presence felt since its very first day a year ago when it coloured the social media site with the shades of yellow and purple. Besides being driven to bringing news to the fingertips of readers, the platform has successfully leveraged the power of Facebook to invite readers to participate in its campaigns and create change with it.

     

    Speaking on the first Facebook anniversary celebrations, RituKapur, CEO, The Quint said, “In this exciting one year, we have experimented with content, formats, technology and different ways of engaging our readers meaningfully. Throughout this ride, we’ve broken news (and parameters) as well as our own expectations, but most importantly, we’ve broken the perception that only print or television can rule information. We dreamt of a platform where we could interact with our readers and they’ve overwhelmed us with their response. It is indeed a time of celebration for the entire team for what we’ve managed to achieve together!”

     

    Amongst several campaigns that garnered a lot of attention on Facebook was the #MakeOutInIndia campaign that talked about breaking away from the hypocrisy that is associated with sexuality and discussions on sex in India. #SayYesToWeed was another high-impact initiative where The Quint took the onus of breaking the myth that weed is harmful. The #BiharMobile campaign grabbed a lot of eyeballs as The Quint went out to become the first digital-only platform to cover an entire election on smartphones.

     

    Facebook was where the platform began to test waters and tried to understand what its readers expected and wanted. From its first 500 likes to now more than 3 million fans, from the ‘first’ piece of breaking news to the ‘first’ 1,000 shares, the first taste of going viral with the `BuriLadki’ poster which broke gender stereotypes in India, The Quint has displayed tremendous growth in this one year which it plans to continue building on in the year ahead.

     

  • With the number of infotainment channels on the rise, it’s important to re-look at factual entertainment as an alternative experience to general entertainment

    The Anchor: Ritu Kapur on 5 ways factual entertainment channels can score over GECs

    By Ritu Kapur

     

    In a cluttered TV environment with increasing content sameness and fatigue, factual entertainment channels are a refreshing “window to the world”, with unpredictable, spectacular, high end productions.  But with the number of infotainment channels on the rise, it’s important, we feel, to re-look at factual entertainment as an alternative experience to general entertainment.

     

    Production Style

    Factual channels need to change the production style to make the content more entertaining, interactive and accessible. History TV 18 has broken the documentary “all-knowing voice of God” format with shows like Pawn Stars, Ice Road Truckers and a competition show like Top Shot. Where the content is not shying away from information, but presenting it in viewer friendly, character-driven reality format.

     

    Characters

    Television across the world is driven by iconic characters. For the longest time animals took centre-stage. There is already a move towards characters becoming the defining face of channels like Bear Grylls on Discovery. But it’s important for these characters to evolve further and break away from repetitive formats.

     

    Unlike other channels, factual channels need to create identifiable characters out of everyday people, doing extraordinary things.  And it’s not enough to just build these characters but to use them creatively to convey information to the viewers.

     

    Drama

    Why should drama only be the forte of a GEC? Factual entertainment channels should take the lead in creating high quality drama that is not there just for drama sake but to bring alive themes from history, science and survival. History TV18 is taking its first step towards that with an Emmy award winning drama series called The Kennedys. The series is very well-researched, hasHollywoodgreats like Katie Holmes and is a big budget production.

     

    A 360 degree view of India

    High end productions onIndiahave always had the western perspective. It’s important now for Indian channels to assert and present the realIndia, breaking all clichés. These should be done with global syndication in mind so that this perspective is accessible internationally.

     

    Making International Content Accessible

    Dubbing in regional languages has been the primary means of reaching out to larger viewership inIndia. It’s important now to review the kind of experience this dubbing provides for its viewers. Languaging that creates a context for the aspirational regional Indian viewer is important. It is also important to go beyond dubbing to also use short formats, promo styling and other creative TV devices to make international content relevant and “belong” to the Indian viewer.

     

    Ritu Kapur is the Programming head at A+E Network, TV18