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Tag: Sameer Pitalwalla

  • Siddharth Narula promoted to Chief Revenue Officer, Aditya Aima joins as Business Head – ASEAN and Minal Sharma joins as National Sales Head

    Culture Machine expands technology business into ASEAN

    By A Correspondent

     

    Digital media network Culture Machine has reorganised its sales team as Siddharth Narula, who served as the President – Revenue has been promoted to Chief Revenue Officer, overlooking the expansion of the firm’s technology sales footprint in International Markets, starting with South East Asia and North America.

     

    Aditya Aima, has joined as the Business Head – ASEAN for Culture Machine, operating out of Malaysia. Aditya will overlook the expansion of Culture Machine’s Intelligence Machine and Video Machine offerings to its brand and advertisers.

     

    Minal Sharma, has joined as the National Sales Head, overlooking all sales for Culture Machine’s Studios and Media Brands. Minal joins the Culture Machine team with over 16 years of experience across leading media and entertainment brands.

     

    Narula will continue to report into Sameer Pitalwalla, CEO & Co-Founder, Culture Machine while Aima and Sharma will report into Siddharth Narula.

     

    Said Pitalwalla: “Our Indian media brands lead the charts in each of their verticals, and the core technology platforms that have helped scale them are already in use by Fortune 500 clients globally, with large demand the world over. We are excited about growing this opportunity, while continuing to focus on our domestic Media business.”

     

    Added Narula:“2016 has been one of the most active years for Culture Machine in terms of revenue escalation and content creation. We created trendsetting videos which have led to hundreds of global and local brands to collaborate with us, resulting in award winning campaigns. In the embryonic days of digital entertainment and technology, the addition of Minal and Aditya will help catalyse the process.”

     

  • Ties up with Tubefilter and dick clark productions. First Internationally Localized Version of the Streamy Awards

    Culture Machine brings Streamy Awards to India

    By A Correspondent

     

    Culture Machine in partnership with Tubefilter and dick clark productions has brought the first internationally localized version of the Streamy Awards which honor the best in YouTube, Facebook, online video and the creators behind it, to India. The awards show will be produced for audiences in India and South Asian territories including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bhutan.

     

    “The prestigious Streamy Awards are a perfect fit with Culture Machine’s vision of creating entertainment for the Internet generation,” said Sameer Pitalwalla, CEO and Co-Founder of Culture Machine. “The South Asian market is amongst the top 3 Internet markets in the world, and our partnership with Tubefilter and dick clark productions is a step towards providing a platform that recognizes achievements for those pushing the boundaries of entertainment on the Interwebs.”

     

    “Online video and digital entertainment is indeed a global phenomenon that has brought us closer than ever before, but the world still remains a mosaic of many diverse cultures and the creative communities that surround them,“ said Streamy Awards creator Drew Baldwin. “From the beginning, the Streamy Awards have always strived to showcase digital entertainment to broader audiences, and our partnership with Culture Machine marks an important first step in our mission to celebrate excellence in online video, no matter in what part of the world it is made.”

     

    Our partnership with Culture Machine represents all of the elements we feel necessary for success in localizing the show,” said Mark Rafalowski, EVP, International Distribution, dick clark productions. “Digital networks and traditional media companies recognize the Streamy Awards as a truly unique program that bridges media consumption patterns across multiple demographics.”

     

    The international partnership was announced at MIPCOM, the year’s most anticipated global market for entertainment content across all platforms, where Tubefilter and dick clark productions will continue to pursue the development of localized versions of the Streamy Awards for additional international territories in the next year.

     

  • A new technology solution that combines Big Data and Content, across platforms, to glean incredible new insights into audiences, content and brands

    Culture Machine unveils tech solutions for data analysis

    By A Correspondent

     

    Sameer Pitalwalla and Venkat Prasad

    Leading digital video start-up Culture Machine has launched Intelligence Machine, a new technology that combines data and content across platforms to uncover new insights into audiences, content and brands.

     

    “Social platforms in today’s world are just like a cable operator. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are all video platforms and knowing what content to create for each is what makes a brand successful online,” said Sameer Pitalwalla, CEO and Co-Founder, Culture Machine. Intelligence Machine identifies metrics for brands and content creators, from earned and owned videos to content formats, geographic presence, trending topics and audience communities. These help the brand in being abreast about what consumers want and what video content needs to be generated. The new technology also benchmarks the brands against its competitors on the digital platform and thus gives them an opportunity to move up the ladder. Intelligence Machine also enables a user to discover successful content formats for an audience segment in a particular industry and geography that pertains to them.

     

    “The method of media consumption is changing over the years. Earlier, television was the only source of video generation, today we’re in the internet era,” said Venkat Prasad, COO/CTO and Co-Founder, Culture Machine as he talked about the rationale behind Intelligence Machine. Intelligence Machine collects data, crunches the data and separates it out into various elements. This data is then used to identify consumer trends and patterns and develop meaningful insights. “About one billion videos are crunched daily,” Mr Prasad said.

     

    As content becomes available online, there is a whole bunch of subcultures and communities that have emerged, like in the beauty space you have DIY videos, styling videos etc, Sameer illustrates, highlighting the importance of a thorough study of data before putting your content out there. Intelligence Machine however cannot tell a brand what it should do; it will merely give you in adequate detail a performance review of sorts. It will let a brand know current trends; for example, in the winter season videos on how to keep your skin moisturised and how to prevent dry skin were some of the leading hits as that was the trend then, however now in the summer videos on how to prevent sunburn, etc are the hot topics. Data like this is passed on to the brand or any content creator and thus helps them get a clear idea of what the consumer wants.

     

    “We think our product has a lot of potential, but we haven’t approached advertisers yet. We hope our product will speak for itself. As of now we want to bring it out into the market and see the response we get,” Mr Prasad added.

     

    Besides data analysis, Culture Machine also produces its own content which contributes to a major portion of the overall business. Higher versions of Intelligence Machine are also a work in progress Mr Pitalwalla informed and these will be in the market soon.

     

  • Disney UTV Digital has launched a bouquet of four freemium apps for Indian mobile subscribers – UTV, Disney, Comedy and Devotional

    Disney UTV Digital launches freemium apps for feature phones

    By A Correspondent

     

    Disney UTV Digital has launched a bouquet of four freemium apps for Indian mobile subscribers – UTV, Disney, Comedy and Devotional. The Nokia Asha series has pre-embedded the UTV app on more than 2.5 million devices.

     

    Content in the UTV app includes latest movie trailers, full length movies (Bollywood & Regional), Bollywood gossip and more. The Disney App includes short form content featuring Mickey and Friends, other Disney classics such as Big Bad Wolf and Santa’s Workshop and Pixar short-form animation such as Reds Dream and Adventures of Andre and Wally B.

     

    The apps support monetization via both ads as well as paid subscriptions enabled through Digital Disney UTV’s mobile operator billing platform. This allows regular mobile users to access both ad-supported content as well as premium content within the same app through a one-click transaction via their mobile operator.

     

    Sameer Pitalwalla

    Sameer Pitalwalla, Director, Celebrity and Video, Disney UTV, said, “While we have a robust smartphone strategy, we wanted to provide feature phone users with an excellent video experience. We combined our great catalogue with best in breed technology and have seen both download and engagement numbers catching fire.”

     

    “Engagement and innovation have emerged as one of the top deciding factors in the mobile phone industry with more and more youth accessing apps that enhance their user experience. Our association with Disney UTV has been extremely successful and, together, we continue to add value to our consumers by offering superior on-the-go video streaming,” said Gerard Rego, Director – Developer Experience, Nokia India.

     

  • Wide acceptance and understanding of the digital medium within the fraternity will lead to better returns

    The Anchor: 5 wishes for Santa to augment Digital growth in the country

    By Sameer Pitalwalla

     

     

    #1 Cheap android tablets taking off
    The first generation of Android 2.3+ tablets between $35 – $100, that feature 3G + Wifi and hopefully LTE radio’s by the end of the year. If that happens, the market will open like the way it has for smart-phones.

     

    #2 3G to mature and the first leg of LTE to roll out across major metros

    3G has plenty of issues, including price and connectivity, but hopefully it will grab more share from the current Edge/GPRS data market as it matures. The much awaited rollout of LTE services should begin in metros later in the year.

     

    #3 YouTube to continue its dominance

    With three media companies working on their own hulu’esque product intended to rival Youtube, Youtube itself will continue to grow in traffic and revenue as it gobbles up more premium content, Live TV and events.

     

    #4 Facebook to emerge as a platform for premium content

    Facebook has already done this with music (Spotify) and being the second largest destination in the world for video after Youtube, one would expect they will begin pushing towards leveraging their platform for content owners to distribute and monetize their content. They certainly have the reach and the ecosystem to pull of what could be an incredible media experience.

     

    #5 More Ad Money

    With 120 million internet users, it’s about time we breach the 1-2% of all ad money being allocated to digital. Even if the ad industry grows 50% on its current base in this market scenario, it will open up a lot more innovation in the digital media landscape.

     

     

    Sameer Pitalwalla is Senior Vice President, UTV Interactive and Business Head, Celebrity and Video