Executive Dossier

Applause Entertainment’s Sameer Nair on disrupting creativity & redefining storytelling

Published

6 years ago

July 27, 2020

Applause Entertainment CEO Sameer Nair, who was once a hotel management student, went on to discover his true passion for storytelling and eventually landed up in the media and entertainment industry. He spent close to three decades in understanding the TV business and created some great shows during his time at Star. Nair, credited for creating daily soap operas and bringing Kaun Banega Crorepati in our lives, is now focussed on creating premium content for modern-day audiences. According to him, premium cinematic television is something which India is missing and that is the void Nair is hoping to fill. The aim is also to create binge-worthy content for leading streaming platforms. Applause Entertainments upcoming projects include Udan Patolas, Avrodh- The siege within, Taj – A Monument of Blood and The Scam. The studio is also developing the original, multi-season series Seeker with partners Gurinder Chadha and Sunder Aaron.

Nair, in a virtual fireside chat with Indiantelevision.com group founder, CEO and editor in chief Anil Wanvari, offered key insights into his company’s plans, creating content in today’s age and the importance of storytelling. Nair was always determined to set up his own creative studio and do all formats of content. He enjoys storytelling and loves working with creative minds. He is also positive about doing multinational collaborations in order to deliver quality content that can transcend boundaries.

Edited Excerpts:

Do you consider yourself a content pioneer?

I think I have had a long career in this industry. I got acquainted with the media and entertainment business in the late eighties. I have been a content creator since then and I used to do advertising, documentaries and then I moved on to TV. Most people are unaware that I did a show called Chennai Doordarshan. After that, I spent many years with Star TV and then the famous Kaun Banega Crorepati happened. I have been lucky enough to be part of the television industry when it was in a pioneering stage. We started with a few hundred TV homes to now 200 million TV homes. I am fortunate to continue with the work that I enjoy doing. We did a lot of pioneering things. Whether I am a pioneer or someone doesn’t matter. As far as content disruption is concerned, I think it has been a natural evolution of what I have always been. This is something that I always wanted to do as a creator and I enjoy working with creative minds. Our business is a creative art-form and it takes a lot of moving parts to create what you are seeing on screen. So, I am having the time of my life.

Do you believe you are disrupting creatively?

The biggest disrupter happening in the past 20 years is the growth of the internet and how it is changing consumer behaviour and the pandemic has accelerated that. The things which were predicted that it will happen in the next seven to eight years is happening now. I think different people are doing different models but I am looking at investing money in creation and then taking it forward for licensing. Applause Entertainment is the movie hybrid business studio that looks after operating finance, attracting capital to content creation and then processing to licensing and monetisation.

You had a well stretched out journey, after leaving Star TV you did quite a few films also, so how has it helped in your journey with the streamers now? Have you had to re-learn everything when you are making streaming shows?

Way before the daily soap opera revolution happened, India used to present weekly programs. In the nineties, India produced some excellent shows. I have been a voracious consumer of all this content. I have grown up watching Hindi and English movies and American television.

So, it is not so much about relearning, but it is a different style of storytelling which is popular in the West. They have done this kind of premium drama series that we are talking about now. So, it is a function of aligning the creative people we work with to deliver on that front. I think it is more about re-disciplining as in you get used to producing content in a way. At heart, I am a creative producer; I make things happen and execute them. As they say, history goes in a circle, it repeats itself, storytelling and universal truth remain the same but what changes are people, audiences, platform, modernity, social taste and social context. So, it is a variety of content that I like.

If you go back in time, storytelling was happening in America and then came HBO which changed the way storytelling was done in television. Later, Netflix came and magnified what HBO was already doing.

HBO redefined cinematic television. It attracted a lot of filmmakers and not just TV producers. I think the advantage India has is that currently, we have our HBO moment. The whole rise of OTT and devices in the last two to three years are HBO moments. The advantage is that we have a reference point as HBO. We have seen what they have done and are able to learn best practices from them. Also, the world has become a much smaller place, the scope of global learning, global understanding, adapting new shows, working with Indian and international writers is possible today. I believe creating global content is much more accessible now. At the end of the day no matter what the technology is it needs a compelling story to attract attention.

What inspires you the most? Is it films, lives, books or to say whose work inspires you?

I never went to film school but I have always been a fan of what we call as popular culture. While growing up my mother and I used to watch Hindi movies every week for the entire seventies. I watched a large amount of TV, Hollywood cinema, I am a big fan of Spielberg and I love the Rocky series. I am not fixated with any kind of thing, I love watching documentaries as much as I love watching comedies. I like reading books, especially short biographies. I derive inspiration from the lives of other people.

What books do you love reading and what books you will recommend to our readers?

I am reading a book called IBM and the Holocaust. It is about the Nazi journey and the Holocaust. I am reading 16 Stormy Days, about the creation of our constitution. Then there is a book called Within an Empire, it is my all-time favourite. I am also reading a book named Way Finder, then there is a book called A Case For God, The Unknown Man

Do you have the ambition to become a writer, director or a showrunner?

As a producer, we are anyway showrunners. The most important thing is the producer and executive producer which I am. I have done a few pieces but I think it requires a lot of effort and focus which I am not able to give now. About being a director, I have directed in the past but currently I am happy doing this producing business. Writing is a passion; it is something I want to do in the future.

You were quite busy in the pandemic. You had Your Honour, Undekhi, Avrodh, Hostages season 2, Scam. Is it what you want the life at Applause Entertainment to look like? Are you looking at creating a studio like America, churning out stories every month?

Last year we released one show every month. We did 12 releases before the pandemic happened and proceeded to do more three to five in the last four months. So that has been our plan in any case. We want to produce a large number of high-quality shows. Our goal at Applause Entertainment is to create a diversified content pipeline that includes long-form animation shows, movies, documentaries, short stories and many other stories. We are also collaborating with international partners where we are happy to co-produce and co-fund.

The team at Applause Entertainment is looking at working with a variety of content, marketing and distribution partners. We are getting better with what we do, the learning process and after doing close to 16 shows, one gets to know the pitfalls, costs and other important aspects.

What is your parameter of success? What is your runway to make the profit?

We are a young company, maybe after five years, we will talk about year on year growth. We are a studio and part of showbiz; we have our business plan and the runway. The two big things that should come out of this is that we want to become a studio that is known for its creative output, quality of its product and then make money while doing so and also have fun while doing it. We are obviously not into the subscriber business; we are not a platform, so we are looking at working with a wider variety of content creators. Also, if the streamers get more subscribers, the company is automatically benefited. We are looking at a bigger horizon in the coming five to seven years. Our focus is to go local for global.

Applause Entertainment wants to become a studio that is known for its creative output and quality shows. We are also looking at creating subsequent seasons of the existing shows as it gives more insight. We continue to develop things that we are currently doing, we are looking at engaging with streamers at an earlier stage for some specific things.

Related Topics:Applause Entertainment Sameer Nair

Up Next

NEWJ (New Emerging World of Journalism Limited) announces appointment of Siddharth Zarabi as Managing Editor

Don't Miss

Lower ad revenue and exceptional items pull down Zeel bottom-line for Q4, FY 2020

Click to comment

Executive Dossier

Game on, fame on as Good Game hunts India’s first global gaming star

Published

3 weeks ago

January 27, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Game faces on, pressure high India’s gaming ambitions are levelling up. Good Game, billed as the world’s first as-live global gaming reality show, has officially launched in India with a bold mission: to crown the country’s first Global Gaming Superstar.

Blending esports with mainstream entertainment, the show brings together competitive gaming, creativity and on-camera performance in a format that tests more than just joystick skills. Contestants will be judged on gameplay, screen presence and their ability to perform under pressure, reflecting how gaming has evolved from pastime to profession and pop culture currency.

Fronting the show are three high-profile ambassadors: actor and entrepreneur Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cricket star Rishabh Pant, and gaming creator Ujjwal Chaurasia. The winner will take home Rs 1 crore ($100,000) among the largest prize pools for any Indian reality show along with the chance to represent India on a global stage.

Backed by a planned annual investment of up to Rs 100 crore, Good Game is also courting brand partners, promising a minimum reach of 500 million among India’s core youth audience. The creators position the show as a bridge between entertainment and interactive culture, offering long-format content, community engagement and commercial scale.

Auditions are now open to Indian citizens aged 18 and above, inviting amateur and professional gamers, creators and performers alike. Shortlisted candidates will be called for in-person auditions in Mumbai on 14 and 15 February, and in Delhi on 28 February and 1 March 2026.

With big money, big names and even bigger ambition, Good Game signals a shift in how India views gaming not just as play, but as performance, profession and prime-time spectacle.

Digital

SpotDraft hires new CMO and CFO to fuel global push for its AI contract platform

Published

3 months ago

December 3, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

INDIA: SpotDraft has strengthened its senior ranks as it gears up for faster global expansion, naming Alon Waks as chief marketing officer and Amit Sharma as chief financial officer. The appointments follow the firm’s $54 million Series B round earlier this year and mark a push to scale across the Americas, EMEA and India.

The AI-powered contract-lifecycle-management platform has posted 100 per cent year-on-year growth in customer acquisition, counting Apollo.io, IPSY, Mixpanel, Oyster and Panasonic among its global clients. The firm processes more than one million contracts annually, with volumes up 173 per cent and nearly 50,000 monthly active users.

Waks, a veteran of Kustomer, Bizzabo, CreatorIQ, LivePerson and ZoomInfo, will steer global marketing and category positioning as legal teams adopt AI-driven tools. Sharma, who has led finance across scaling tech firms since 2016, will guide financial strategy, investor relations and market expansion.

Both hires aim to sharpen SpotDraft’s bid for a larger slice of the fast-growing legal-tech market, expected to exceed $63 billion by 2032. Co-founder and chief executive Shashank Bijapur said the company is focused on scaling go-to-market operations in the Americas, deepening leadership in EMEA, and accelerating AI capabilities for general counsels and legal-operations leaders.

Clients report shorter deal cycles and better alignment between legal and business teams. “What used to take weeks now happens in days,” said Abnormal Security senior legal operations manager Susan Koenig. DeepL head of legal operations André Barrow, said SpotDraft has helped reframe legal “from a cost centre to a generator of revenue”.

Executive Dossier

Outdoor Ads Get Smarter as LOC8 Shifts OOH from Visibility to Attention

Published

3 months ago

November 28, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Out-of-home ads were once the wallflowers of marketing seen by everyone, noticed by few. But in an age where attention has become the world’s most fought-over currency, even billboards are getting a brain upgrade. Enter LOC8, OSMO’s AI-powered attention engine, quietly reshaping the old OOH playbook by measuring not just who could have looked at an ad, but who actually did. The shift is subtle but seismic: impressions are out, impact is in and data, not gut instinct, is calling the shots.

In a landscape where marketers question every rupee spent outdoors, LOC8 is turning lampposts, flyovers and traffic islands into precision-mapped attention laboratories. By crunching dwell time, visibility zones, perceptual size and real-world obstructions, the platform is dragging OOH into a future where creativity meets computer vision and where the best ideas aren’t just eye-catching, but eye-measured. From automotive facelifts to FMCG novelty and real estate trust-building, the message is clear, outdoor has stopped shouting and started listening. Indian Television Dot Com explores more about it in an Interview interview with OSMO co-founder Nipun Arora.

On how OSMO is shifting outdoor advertising from a visibility-led medium to an attention-led one through LOC8.

Traditional OOH has long been measured by visibility and impressions i.e how many people could see an ad. OSMO, through its proprietary AI platform LOC8, is shifting that narrative more towards likelihood of being noticed. Using computer vision and machine learning, LOC8 analyzes real-world video data to measure visibility zones, obstructions, dwell time and perceptual size; bringing precision to how attention is quantified outdoors. It moves the focus from mere impressions to quality of impressions, making OOH a data-verified, attention-led medium comparable to digital in accountability.

On how marketers can use LOC8’s dwell-time, visibility and perception insights to craft more effective, emotionally resonant OOH campaigns.

LOC8 helps brands understand how people truly experience outdoor media how long they look, from what distance, and under what conditions. By quantifying dwell time, visibility duration, and perceptual size; marketers can plan campaigns that align with real human viewing behavior. This empowers creative and strategy teams to design emotionally resonant storytelling where messaging, visual hierarchy and placement are optimized for how people actually notice and process OOH creatives.

About what LOC8 has revealed through campaigns like Renault Triber and Namaste India on how categories such as auto, FMCG and real estate use attention metrics to drive outcomes.

Each category uses attention data differently but all share one common goal: to convert outdoor visibility into measurable engagement.

• Automotive | Renault Triber

For the new Renault Triber facelift, bold creative met data-led planning through LOC8. By analyzing on-ground video data, LOC8 measured real audience attention across placements factoring in visibility zones, obstructions, traffic speed and perceptual size. This enabled Renault to identify corridors that delivered maximum reach, saliency and engagement, optimizing media efficiency and ROI.

• FMCG | Namaste India

In OOH, innovation is the hook and assets are the bait. But bait often hides the hook. With Loc8’s attention metrics, we ensured the bait wasn’t a hurdle, rather it became the perfect stage for innovation to deliver its full impact! The insight proved that creative novelty, when validated by attention data, drives deeper engagement and measurable brand lift.

• Real Estate

For luxury and real estate campaigns targeting HNI/UHNI audiences, attention patterns differ especially between front and rear passengers, who are often the core audience segment for premium sites. LOC8’s ability to distinguish rear vs. front visibility plays a critical role here. It helps identify sites that offer longer viewing windows and stronger perceptual dominance from the rear seat where decision-makers are most likely seated making it a key differentiator for premium and trust-led categories. Together, these insights prove that auto optimizes for impact, FMCG for recall, and real estate for trust visibility showing how attention metrics adapt to category goals while ensuring measurable outcomes.

On how attention analytics will shape the future of brand storytelling and media planning as OOH becomes more digitised and data-driven.

As outdoor digitizes, attention analytics will inform not just where to advertise but how stories are told in public spaces. This evolution transforms OOH from a static broadcast channel into a dynamic attention ecosystem, where creativity is optimized through evidence-based insight.

On how LOC8’s data-led framework helps marketers quantify OOH impact and make outdoor a more accountable, ROI-driven medium.

LOC8 bridges the gap between intuition and evidence. By quantifying metrics like visibility duration, attention opportunity index, and visual saliency rank, it allows brands to benchmark site performance and justify investment. This data-led approach brings transparency, comparability and ROI measurement to a medium historically driven by perception.

On how OSMO ensures AI and computer vision enhance creativity rather than reduce it to numbers.

OSMO believes that technology should enhance creativity, not overshadow it. LOC8’s attention models reveal what naturally draws the human eye helping creative teams refine design cues, contrast, and visual hierarchy for greater impact. By merging art and science, LOC8 empowers creativity with intelligence.

About the creative best practices and design cues LOC8 has uncovered regarding what truly captures consumer attention outdoors.

LOC8’s visual cognition analysis has surfaced clear patterns across campaigns:

• High contrast and minimal messaging outperform cluttered designs.

• Motion cues draw significantly longer dwell times.

• The first two seconds are critical, creatives must establish focus instantly.

• Contextual alignment between the creative and its environment increases attention by over 30%.

These learnings offer a scientific foundation for creative effectiveness helping brands design OOH that’s visually magnetic and emotionally memorable.

On how attention metrics will integrate into omnichannel planning where OOH, digital and social work together for unified brand impact.

Attention can become the unifying KPI across OOH, digital and social to creates seamless storytelling continuity, where outdoor triggers digital engagement. The future of omnichannel planning lies in attention-led integration ensuring that campaigns don’t just reach audiences everywhere but truly capture and hold their focus.