MX Player has received $110 million in fresh funding from Tencent and Times Internet. The deal marks Tencent’s second investment into a Times Internet asset, after it invested in sibling Gaana, the music streaming platform, in 2018.
Speaking on the investment, Karan Bedi, CEO MX Player, said: “We’re happy to welcome our new partners, whose investment is a glowing endorsement of our stellar growth and huge future potential. Our vision is to be one of the world’s largest entertainment platforms, serving our users across their online entertainment needs, starting with streaming video and beyond.”
Added Satyan Gajwani, Vice Chairman, Times Internet: “MX Player was our most ambitious investment last year, and it has the potential to change mobile entertainment in India and in the world. It plays an important part of Times Internet’s strategy of being the largest consumer platform in India, and we’re excited to have Tencent help us in this mission.”
The first Indian Facebook employee, Kirthiga Reddy, now Managing Director, Facebook India left quite an impression on the audience with her talk entitled ‘Winning in a mobile first world’ at the 11th Marketing Conclave organised by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). FOBO or the Fear of Being Offline is a new term that is picking up in this day and age, she said. On Mother’s Day, India had the second highest ranking in terms of interactions with 1.8 billion interactions on the network. The older generation did exactly the same things we do, she explained, the only difference is that they did it in a different way.
63 percent of young people would prefer to give up TV rather than their phone, she said of a study. 62 percent of young people feel lost if they are not connected to social media. An IAMAI-BCG report estimates that by 2020, a whopping 500 million people will be connected to the internet. Back in the day, your kirana shop owner knew exactly what you needed when you walked into his store. That personalisation is missing today with the advent of the mass media, Reddy explained.
Satyan Gajwani, Chief Executive Officer, Times Internet, backed her up saying, “Technology allows the platform of digital advertising to enhance and create advertisements targeted at certain consumers. Hence we are seeing the growth of native advertisement, which breaks clutter and stops disruptive ads.â€
“Facebook is constantly and consistently integrating virtual reality. Innovations on the creative side of the real estate industry has provided enormous boost to virtual reality concept. Brands are focusing on reaching out to consumers in a personalised and creative manner. And the digital platform provides the best solution,†Reddy said. Out of 1.44 billion people who are on Facebook, 1.2 billion connect to it on a mobile device; she informed highlighting the genesis of a mobile-first world. There is also a growing trend of visual communication, Reddy added. First it started with text, then photos and now the world of video is expanding. Reddy cited the example of Facebook’s feature that allows a user to watch videos without sound on the mobile phone. The feature that is one of the latest, plays a video without sound as the user scrolls through his newsfeed. This will allow users to watch videos on their phones even during a seminar or meeting at work, she joked. Marketers ought to strive to drive awareness and retarget their audience, she said. The ‘cookie’ the dominant web metric used to track customer behaviour online will soon be ditched as it doesn’t correctly evaluate business results, she explained. This is the mobile first world and if we don’t adapt, we will be left far behind, she said.
There are 150 million smartphones users today, and that number is expected to go up to 500 million by 2018. Digital is the new advertising paradigm, Gajwani explained. The internet is driven by smartphones and the amount of digital content being created is skyrocketing. “The 300×250 size banner doesn’t have the same impact today, spots don’t have the same impact either,†Gajwani said. Smart and targeted advertising and marketing with precise solutions is what will drive the numbers, he added. We ought to be enablers and educators of what’s working and what is not. “The opportunity to get creative is here and is bigger than ever before,†he concluded.
L to R: ​​Prashant Singh, MD, Nielsen, Ashish Bhasin, Chairman and CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network ( South Asia), Tushar Vyas, Chief Strategy Officer – South Asia, GroupM, Ravi Dixit, Head – Market Insights, Google and Partho Dasgupta, CEO, BARC India.​
By Dyanne Coelho
The eleventh edition of the Marketing Conclave organised by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) saw industry stalwarts from across platforms highlight key trends in the marketing world from the digital evolution, the changing role of the CMO, cross-platform marketing and the dawn of the mobile as the ‘first’ screen.
Day One kickstarted with a keynote address by Tushar Vyas, Chief Strategy Officer, South Asia, GroupM. “Today’s consumer doesn’t believe in the values of yesterday,†he began talking about how the mobile has taken over the internet and created a complexity in advertising.Rajesh Jain, Founder and Managing Director, netCORE Solutions emphasised that the trend of tracking consumer behaviour has grown mainly in the digital era. There is little or no data tracked in an offline world, like what a consumer goes and picks up in a grocery store, he said. “We ought to start thinking customer journeys,†Jain added. CVL Srinivas, CEO, GroupM South Asia delved into the challenges of marketing in the digital age.“There’s so much talk about digital, we forget that at the end of the day we’re in an ideas business,†he said, talking about how at times we get so overwhelmed with data that we lose focus of our core competency. “We ought to be able to change mindsets, not just technologies,†Srinivas added.
A panel discussion on the expanding roles of the CMO highlighted a study which said that by 2020, the CMO will be spending more on IT than the CIO. The speed at which the CMO needs to react is increasing, the panelists discussed.The argument of whether digital is being effectively integrated with other marketing media, or is just an extension, was the next hot topic of discussion. The panelists concluded that though the digital medium has taken the marketing world by storm, at the end of the day, it all boils down to how well you know and recognise your consumer and give them what they want, when they want it. The final session for Day One discussed whether we are ready for the transition from ‘mobile first’ to a ‘mobile only’ era. High value products like airplane tickets and high value electronic devices are likely to be purchased on the desktop rather than the mobile phone, the panelists discussed. Anurag Singh, Co-founder and ED – India (Ads Platform), Affle concluded by saying that there is no wrong and right, you have to decide what’s best for your consumer depending on what your product and service is.
Day Two saw industry captains like Kirthiga Reddy, MD Facebook, Satyan Gajwani, CEO Times Internet, Ashish Sahni, Head Digital Marketing Tata Motors, Ashish Bhasin, Chairman and CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network, Partho Dasgupta, CEO, BARC, among others. The bias of the internet towards the English language was discussed in depth, with panelists arguing that an increasing number of regional languages, especially Hindi are picking up and the internet needs to adapt, lest consumers feel choked by the pressure of being force fed English language content online. With availability of cheaper smartphones and accessibility to internet, vernacular content is going to drive growth in digital marketing. Gyan Gupta, COO, DB Digital said, “Hindi as a language is witnessing 40 percent penetration in the online space. With non-metros witnessing steady growth in internet penetration, the vernacular language is certainly the flavor of the day.â€
Ways and means of tracking consumer behaviour without being ‘creepy’ was the key point of discussion in the session entitled ‘Digital Footprints’ Data and Automation in Marketing: The modern marketers’ success mantra.’ How much is too much, was much talked about in the context of following consumer footprints in the digital space.
“The first thing advertisers ought to do if they want to undertake programmatic marketing is allocate 25 percent of the total marketing budget to it,†Reem Saied, Business Head, Cadreon India said while discussing ways and means of optimizing marketing efforts for an enhanced performance. The quality of talent that marketers need to hire have changed, Apurva Chamaria, AVP and Head of Global Brand and Digital Marketing, HCL Technologies said. “We now hire statisticians, technology experts and bring them into the marketing team. The pool we hire from has changed,†he explained.
“This is the age of technology where you can get hold of a specialised doctor on an app,†Rathin Lahiri, CMO, Meru Cabs said speaking at the session titled ‘Simplifying the Mobile Marketing Ecosystem’. The panelists discussed the advent of the digital evolution especially in the mobile space. Madan Mohapatra, Head Customer Strategy, Future Group, said, “If we are to look at the global advertising market, the industry around US $600 billion, with mobile advertising pegged at around US $100 billion. In India, mobile advertising is a fraction of global spends. The time has is ripe to increase mobile ad spend as growing captive consumers are found mobile.â€The mobile screen has forced the marketing ecosystem to evolve. “Digital is not something you can ignore. If you don’t speak for yourself, your consumers will take you down,†Akshay Sharma, Head – Marketing, Eros Digital exclaimed.
Kirthiga Reddy, Managing Director, Facebook India, highlighted how Facebook is attempting to innovate. “We are constantly and consistently integrating virtual reality. Innovations on the creative side of the real estate industry has provided enormous boost to virtual reality concept.†Talking about Digital Marketing, Satyan Gajwani, Chief Executive Officer, Times Internet, said, “Technology allows the platform of digital advertising to enhance and create advertisements targeted at certain consumers. Hence we are seeing the growth of native advertisement, which tears through the clutter.
Having an absolute, standard method for measurement of the attributes of all digital platforms is the need of the hour the panelists discussed at the session entitled ‘Establishing a common digital standard’. “Cross media measurement has been talked about for a while. We keep measuring the media, we forget to measure the consumer,†Ashish Bhasin, Chairman and CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network (South Asia) stressed. India is still far behind in trying to understand the consumers’ buying behavior, Prashant Singh, Managing Director; Nielsen said adding that the next step is for BARC to look at digital. BARC CEO Partho Dasgupta said it may not be correct keep citing examples of progress of digital in the US and the UK because “they may not be the best one can haveâ€. “95 per cent of videos are still consumed on television sets in the UK,†he added.
Thoughts, ideas, statistics and case studies made the two-day conclave an insightful and informative event. The programme brought together some of the brightest minds in the marketing fraternity together on one platform and thus enabled an educative exchange of thoughts and ideas to light the path forward for marketing in India.
On the occasion of X’mas 2014 so we asked some industry captains to tell us what goodies they would like Santa Claus to bring them this Dec 25. Interviews by Shobhana Nair here goes:
Srinivasan K Swamy, Chairman and Managing Director, RK Swamy BBDO
If I were to wish for something, then this would be double digit GDP growth of our economy in 2015!
M G Parameswaran, Member Management Board, FCB Ulka Advertising
I wish Santa Claus to bring to the advertising agency business a big bottle of confidence tonic! An elixir that will infuse everyone in our exciting world of advertising with extra courage, confidence and spirit; to believe in the industry, to believe in their own competence and contribution to the success of brands and most importantly a unshakeable faith in the greater purpose of advertising: to move consumers from their inertia, to keep the wheels of industry moving, to make the world a better place, one OTS/ one TRP at a time!
Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman and Creative Director, South Asia
Ogilvy & Mather India
I’d like Santa to distribute small and beautiful packets of wisdom for everybody in the industry.
Satyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet
New consumers are buying smartphones everyday, but for them to be useful, the cost of data needs to reduce. When users want to pay for something, it shouldn’t be as cumbersome as it is today.
Ashish Bhasin, Chairman & CEO South Asia – Dentsu Aegis Network
If Santa Claus could meet with the Finance Minister and emphasize upon him that in the forthcoming budget he needs to give a sensible taxation regime, particularly with respect to service tax and VAT applicable on the advertising and marketing communications business, I think it will go a long way in helping our industry grow. A an industry, we want to show our creativity in the area of advertising and not in the area of creative accounting!
Prashant Panday, MD & CEO, ENIL
The one thing is that Phase-3 auctions get completed before March 31 and migration of 21 Phase-2 licences which are lapsing on March 31st happens on time.
Anirudh Dhoot, Director, Videocon
In line with our Prime Minister’s vision of “Make in Indiaâ€, we expect policies and infrastructural support for electronic components and panel manufacturing in India. India has the potential to become a global electronics manufacturing hub not only for internal consumption but also satiating global requirement.
Sanjay Mehta, Joint CEO, Social Wavelength
The one thing that I’d want Santa Claus to bring to our industry, would be Better Retainer Fees :) For all the hard work that the social media agencies do for clients, from strategy to execution, from creatives to media, from technology to ORM, we still don’t get adequate respect, reflected in terms of decent monthly retainer fees! As we get into 2015, I hope Santa Claus makes our clients acknowledge the role we play and compensate us better!
Santosh Padhi, Chief Creative Officer & Co-Founder, Taproot India
I’d want Santa to give us an emotional gift in the form of ‘unity within the industry’. We are fighting so much within ourselves and are even ready to kill each other for business. We are going from bad to worse now. There’s a long list of things that I am seeking from Santa but I definitely feel that people should follow ethics and morals. We need to make it a human industry. There’s just no humanity left and that’s a huge disconnect.
Arvind Sharma, former President, AAAI
There was a great deal of optimism and hope during BJP’s election campaign. And so far it has translated into foreign investment flowing into financial markets. But as far as the ground is concerned, things have to yet get better. We hope 2015 will bring strong growth in the economy for the overall business. Advertising industry depends on the client’s growing business, their budgets and spends. They have been really tight for the last two-and-a-half years. We hope that will change in the coming year.
I am personally delighted to see the launch of the India edition of Huffington Post. Two reasons: One, we hear from politicians and the TV channels that India’s stock is rising in the world order, but it’s another thing to have an international news vehicle like Huffington Post enter India. And, two: I take great pride in the fact the Editor-in-Chief Sruthijith KK (SK) has been a friend. He was out there helping raise public opinion about this blog when it was in an independent avatar and was being taken on by a leading news daily.
He was part of my team at dna in 2006-07, although he didn’t report to me directly. I was in touch with him till around a couple of years back, but met him at his office a couple of weeks back when I was in Noida.
I am not very sure whether I have helped shape his career, but it surely feels good to see someone rise up the ranks to one of the most coveted jobs in the country. He was a good colleague, excellent at his job and went on to do some great work at Mint, Economic Times and later as editor of Quartz.
The reason for this piece is not about SK or the fact HuffPo has entered the country, it’s about:
1. Do we think HuffPo India it has a future?
2. Is the Times of India-HuffPo marriage the right match or a mismatch?
Does HuffPo have a future? Of course it does. Am sure the spreadsheets would’ve been done, but a lot depends a lot on how long the two partners keep investing in it. And, more importantly, how much the flavour of the US edition is retained here.
There are a few other players who are into similar ventures in India: FirstPost, Scroll, Daily O, TheNewsMinute and Quartz. The last of these is where SK worked until recently, so he is obviously clued in to the kind of work HuffPo India needs. The scale is different of course. From the first look, HuffingtonPost.in appears to promise several stories every day, some original and many curated. It will have its set of blogs, and I am sure many of these will make for a good read.
When I heard about HuffPo choosing Times of India as its partner in India, I was unsure if it would work. The internet requires a different style of operations which large media companies in India haven’t been able to establish. That’s one of the reasons why most websites of mainstream media print entities aren’t any great shakes. But the choice of SK and the dozen-odd journalists he has hired is excellent and could well get the team to produce compelling content.
And finally to the point of whether TOI was the right choice for HuffPo India? My view: I am not sure. This isn’t the first time HuffPo has aligned itself with the big fish. In France, it’s partner is Le Monde. So TOI is not a special case.
But what happens when TOI does some disdainful stuff like the focus on Deepika’s cleavage. Will HuffPo India damn it? Will it carry a campaign on Paid Content or something around the Arnab Goswami brand of primetime television journalism?
I remarked on this when I met SK recently but didn’t push for an answer and get him on the backfoot. He obviously knows that it’s not easy to have a mainstream player like The Times of India as one of your parents.
It’s not that one Times group publication hasn’t damned another in the past. I remember an editorial in The Times of India and Maharashtra Times taking on Vinod Mehta’s case on a story on Maharashtra strongman YB Chavan in 1989.
An India Today report sums up what happened following the publication of the YB Chavan story in the Independent (a daily that the Times of India ran from 1989 until the mid-1990s):
“Intriguingly, the most scathing criticism of the report came from the editorial columns of the paper’s own sesquicentenarian sister. After excoriating “juvenile zeal for sensationalism”, the Times of India concluded: “The hysterical self-righteousness of sections of the press is only a facade for perpetrating politically-motivated intellectual terrorism.”
So, Ariannan Huffington and Sruthijith KK need not feel intimidated by Big Brother Times of India. There’s precedence.
In a  2865-word opener Ms Huffington, talks about her views on India and what her site will be doing here. She writes:
“And while HuffPost India will be reporting on all the challenges India is facing and all that is dysfunctional and not working, we’ll also be relentlessly telling the stories of what is working. To start with, we are spotlighting organizations that are tapping into Indians’ collective creativity and compassion to improve the lives of individuals and communities.â€
Just the kind of stuff that works in India and the rest of the world.
Back to where we started.
1. Do we think HuffPo India it has a future? Yes, it does. Will it be a financial success? We aren’t sure, but if The Times of India group isn’t able to manage this, who can?
2. Is the Times of India-HuffPo marriage the right match or a mismatch? This isn’t going to be run by the TOI bosses at Bahadurshah Zafar Marg, but the boys and girls at Times Internet headed by Satyan Gajwani. So, things could well be different. But what happens when someone screws up in the paper or the channels or there’s a negative story in one of the various events that the group organises? We hope that there is no reason for such an eventuality, but given that there’s just too much at stake for The Times of India group in India, if things get too uncomfortable, no marks for guessing what will be given a go-by.
But it would be fair to give Ms Huffington, Mr Satyan Gajwani and Mr Sruthijith a fair chance with the India edition of Huffington Post. Best wishes to them!
Timesofindia.com and Twitter have joined hands to delight users with a unique integration named ‘Tweet to remember’. The joint social initiative seeks to encourage users to exercise their core right as a citizen of world’s largest democracy, India: to remember to vote.
When a user tweets “@timesofindia [city name]” (like “@Timesofindia Delhi”, they will be guided through a process that easily enables them to add the date for their vote to their calendar on their phone or desktop.
In addition, TimesofIndia.com has developed a Social News Hub, in partnership with Twitter & Frrole. It leverages trend analysis and sentiment analysis via algorithmically filtered tweets to display the latest trends and sentiments around candidates and parties, according to users, with real-time data and millions of data points. The data is beautifully presented with dynamic visualizations, sorted by day or week. The platform offers a new lens to understand the Lok Sabha elections, bringing community feedback as a source of news.
Speaking on these partnerships, Satyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet, said, “The social conversation is a new component in today’s news cycle. As a news outlet, Timesofindia.com is always looking for ways to bring new information and new value to its users. With Social Hub, we’re bringing a new perspective that hasn’t been readily visible before, and with Tweet To Remember, we hope to better enable the thriving democracy that powers India.”
Rishi Jaitly, India Market Director, , said, “Twitter is the world’s leading mobile, real-time information network where users follow, share and experience content that is live, public and conversational. During this election season, the Twitter platform has become a vital source of daily information, conversation and communication for citizens and political leaders alike. We applaud Times Internet for innovating on our platform with “Tweet to Remember” and ensuring its audience can use Twitter to add its polling date and additional details to their calendars.”
There’s a lot that is being said on how the advent of technology has revolutionized the M&E ecosystem. With the emergence of newer technologies and players offering these services, it becomes a challenge to find a balance in providing technology with creativity and content. The session on ‘Monetization Opportunities in the Multiscreen World’ sought to throw light on how the ecosystem was witnessing an interesting shift in revenue-sharing models and how companies could monetize effectively during these challenging times.
The panelists included Sam Balsara, Chairman & MD, Madison World; Satyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet Panel; Chakrapani Gollapali, General Manager, Consumer Channels Group, Microsoft India; Neeraj Roy, MD & CEO, Hungama Digital Media; Rishi Jaitly, India Market Director, Twitter; Nikhil Naik, Head – Director, Global Content and Distribution, Vuclip; Karan Bedi, Founder & CEO, Tutorific! and Ramki Sankaranarayanan, CEO, Prime Focus who moderated the session.
Presenting an insightful outlook, Sam Balsara highlighted how the television and mobile will be the only two mediums that will continue to be dominant in the future and how the interplay between the two would result in positive growth of the industry. Balsara said that while television continued to find favour with advertisers, they were gradually waking up to the medium of digital as well. “But advertisers need to be flexible about how the viewer’s see their ads; not just on television but across multiple screens.”
Cautioning the audience, Balsara expressed discontent on how the older norm of doing business was seeing a shift that was not healthy. “The older model of doing advertising was 50-50; half from subscription and half from advertisers. But that has changed of late with more revenues coming from advertisers allowing them to have a greater say in content. It is important that we move back to the old model of 50-50 so that equilibrium is maintained and focus around content remains intact.”
According to Neeraj Roy, it is not true that monetization in India is not up to the mark. “Around Rs 1500-2000 crore is still being directed towards content and that was a very positive sign. But he expressed worry as he said that the monetization exercise was being limited to certain mediums only. The way out is to have a balance in the advertising-transaction ratio, said Roy. With the shift to 4G being imminent, Roy urged content providers to focus on providing content that is high on value as consumers will be willing to pay more provided they get quality content.
Providing a synopsis of his company, Rishi Jaitly said that more than 25 million users use twitter to discover content. Jaitly said that if companies concentrated on investing in value then the monetization will actually go up. “The world today is becoming mobile-first, so content providers needs to work on providing content that is of context and relevant. As a network, our focus would continue to be on fueling public conversation across multiple platforms,” affirmed Jaitly.
Highlighting the scope and challenges faced by his company, Satyan Gajwani said that it was great to see the digital ecosystem in India thriving but the challenge is in delivering content that is high-quality because at the end the customer is going to pay for it. Talking about the issue of piracy facing his portal gaana.com, Gajwani said that the only way to overcome that was by offering such high-value and widespread offering that the user will be forced to come back for anything and everything got to do with music. This will indirectly bring down the number of users going to pirated websites to seek such services.
Times Internet (TIL), the digital arm of The Times of India group, has launched a travel portal HappyTrips.com.
HappyTrips attempts to be a platform helping users plan their next trip, discover amazing hotels and restaurants, things to do as well as providing them with fun facts all around the world.
“We are excited to announce the beta launch of our latest venture HappyTrips.com. HappyTrips is special because it feels like a magazine, but is powered by a robust backend data platform, storing millions of related data points. Upfront, the user sees easy-to-navigate cards with curated guides, itineraries and lists to help them find the best of a city they’re exploring,” said Satyan Gajwani, CEO of Times Internet.
HappyTrips intends to be the go-to destination in the travel category with curated travel advice and actionable-and up-to-date information to inspire readers. “Our featured lists and guides help filter through the noise and find the best places to stay, eat, party, or find something to do”, said Puneet Gupt, Business Head of HappyTrips.com
The site covers close to 200 Indian destinations as of now and another 100 destinations around the world.
                                                                                                                                                                                       Â
By A Correspondent
Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd. (BCCL) issued an announcement on Friday confirming the news that MxMIndia had carried over a week before. Sunil Lulla, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Times Television Network, is to be appointed as President – Corporate Development, BCCL Group. Mr Lulla has spent over eight years in various leadership roles at Times TV Television. In his new strategic role at BCCL, he will be working closely with Vineet Jain, Managing Director, BCCL Group and Satyan Gajwani, Chief Executive Officer, Times Internet Ltd. overseeing a number of group initiatives in the areas of Sports, Music, International Events and more.
Meanwhile, M K Anand, an old BCCL hand, will return to the group after his stint of heading the broadcasting ventures of the Disney UTV group. Mr Anand will be taking over as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Times Television Network. He has previously worked with The Times of India group for 19 years, first with the print business for 14 years and later with the television business at zoOm from 2004 to 2009.
When it’s not hiring whizkids to its fold, it’s striking deals with media hotties to bring them to India.
Times Internet Limited (TIL) has now entered into a strategic partnership with Ziff Davis, Inc. – the leading all-digital media company specializing in the technology, games and men’s lifestyle markets with over 120 million in-market buyers every month. Thanks to this alliance, Times Internet will manage and drive local Indian destinations for IGN (IGN.com) and AskMen (AskMen.com), the premium gaming and men’s lifestyle sites.
As part of the collaboration, Times Internet will have exclusive rights to the IGN and AskMen brands and their content in India.
While IGN is dedicated to video games and pop culture – including comics, film and TV, AskMen carries men’s lifestyle content on the web since launching in 1999.
The partnership grows the list of brands under the Times Local Partners (TLP) group – which is an initiative by Times Internet to partner with global digital companies. IGN and Askmen join the fledgling TLP portfolio, which has already rolled out the Indian editions of Gizmodo, Lifehacker and Business Insider.
Satyan Gajwani
Said Satyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet: “We are really excited about this partnership and the arrival of Ziff Davis’ respected brands coming to India. The IGN name is incredibly respected, and this brings us the opportunity to create premium editorial and video content for the Indian gaming community. AskMen will augment our leadership in men’s lifestyle content offering and deliver the best to our users and advertisers in the coveted male 18-34 demographic.”
Vivek Shah, CEO, Ziff Davis, added: “We’re delighted to be partnering with India’s leading media group to bring localized editions of our brands to this vibrant market for the first-time. The media landscape is evolving rapidly, and millions of Indian males 18-40 will benefit from AskMen and IGN’s globally respected advice.”
Times Internet has made some senior level appointments with Pratik Mazumder moving in from Yatra.com to join as Vice President, Marketing. Pawan Agarwal has joined as Business Head -Gaana.com , Swapnil Shrivastav joins as VP, Ad Tech and Miten Sampat as Business Head, Times City.
Mr Mazumder has experience of 19 years, during which he has worked with Bharti Airtel and Yatra.com. Mr Agarwal, on the other hand, brings with him 12+ years entrepreneurial experience as co-founder & COO at Sunstone Business School. Mr Shrivastav, on the other hand, is an Adtech professional and entrepreneur. He was Founder and CEO of two ventures – Seeknet and Vriti. Mr Sampat was last with Neustar VP of Product Strategy.
Satyan Gajwani
Speaking on the appointments, Satyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet, said: “Each of our new joinees has come from an entrepreneurial environment with incredible expertise and exposure in their domains. Miten,Pawan, and Swapnil have strong technical backbones that will allow them to get into the cores of their business units, and Pratik’s creative energy and diverse background will help us approach marketing more uniquely. They have already made great contributions and we are excited for what’s to come.”
Times Internet Limited (TIL) and AIR will broadcast live commentary of 33 select Pepsi IPL 2013 matches over AIR’s National Channel and FM Gold. Updates for all matches will be broadcast on AIR FM Rainbow Channel.
The running commentary of the matches of Pepsi IPL 2013, including the Playoffs/Final, being played in India, will be broadcast alternately in Hindi and English on National Channel and FM Gold Network. The coverage area of National Channel includes Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Goa, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Orissa, Pondicherry, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and parts of Assam, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. The live commentary of all 33 identified matches will be broadcast over National Channel of AIR which is available all over India.
Satyan Gajwani
Speaking on the association, Satyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet, said, “We’re delighted to renew our association with AIR on Pepsi IPL. By partnering with All India Radio, Pepsi IPL 2013 will tap into a new set of cricket fan audiences across India, particularly beyond the metros.”
“All India Radio, which has always been in the forefront of popularizing sports in India including cricket, is happy to bring live and exciting action from IPL to its listeners”, said LD Mandloi, Director General, All India Radio.
M G Parameswaran, Member Management Board, FCB Ulka Advertising
Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman and Creative Director, South Asia
Satyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet
Ashish Bhasin, Chairman & CEO South Asia – Dentsu Aegis Network
Prashant Panday, MD & CEO, ENIL
Anirudh Dhoot, Director, Videocon
Sanjay Mehta, Joint CEO, Social Wavelength
Santosh Padhi, Chief Creative Officer & Co-Founder, Taproot India
Arvind Sharma, former President, AAAI
By Pradyuman Maheshwari
By a correspondent
Times Internet (TIL), the digital arm of The Times of India group, has launched a travel portal HappyTrips.com.
