MAM
Mindshare and HUL partnership dominate Emvies 2016
MUMBAI: The Hindustan Unilever and GroupM’s Mindshare India partnership has proved to be as good as gold – yet again.
For the second year in succession, the WPP group outfit walked away with the Agency of the year Emvies award with a solid unbeatable 395 points in its bag. That was courtesy the eight gold, 18 silver and fifteen bronze metals it pocketed.
There are no prizes for guessing who the client of the year was: Hindustan Unilever.
With seven bronze, fifteen silvers and 11 golds, Hindustan Unilever maintained a massive lead over everyone else with its 310 point tally.
Straggling several laps behind was PepsiCo with just 75 points; yes, that’s how one sided Emvies 2016 results were. But to Pepsico’s credit, it along with GroupM, snared the grand Emvie for Best Integrated Campaign in Consumer Products : ‘when consumers became co marketers.’
Surprisingly, Mindshare did not take its Emvie wins lightly, considering the fact that it had already bagged the Cannes Lions 2016 Grand Prix with its work on Brooke Bond Red Label Six Pack Band. Theirs were the loudest cheers heard during the evening.
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| The Pepsico-Mindshare combine pocketed the Grand Emvie |
If one were to go by metal tally, the second best media agency at Emvies 2016 was Lodestar UM with six gold, three silver statuettes and three bronze. Its point tally: a pale 135.
The third placed agency – though it tied with Lodestar on the points tally of 135 – was Maxus with four gold, five silver and five bronze.
Commenting on the wins Mindshare south Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar said: “The awards are a direct result of the effort and hard work put in by each and everyone in the team. We at Mindshare believe in recognizing our employees’ skills and commitment, which is further driven to a level of aspiration that leads to rewarding experiences such as the Emvies. Winning these awards by such a large margin is not only a testimony to our accomplishments so far, but also significantly adds to the quality of service we intend to deliver. Creating ground-breaking innovations and strategies has been Mindshare’s forte and this has kept us at the forefront in the industry.”
Added GroupM south Asia CEO CVL Srinivas: “GroupM agencies have had a dream run at the Emvies this year like most other years. I must first of all congratulate our clients who push us to keep raising the bar year after year. Clients who believe in innovation and back our teams to take risks are the ones who win and in turn help us win. Our teams have worked very hard to keep delivering client delight year after year. We have a strong HR and Talent management culture at GroupM and on days like this we realize how important it is to keep the focus on talent development.”
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Hindustan Lever walked away with the client of the year Emvie |
“In today’s day and age of extensive media exposure, the greatest challenge is to create clutter breaking communication that is impactful, optimal and delivers the brand message,” exclaimed Emvies committee chairperson Punitha Arumugam. “ As always this year too at the EMVIES we have seen works by media agencies that have not only been pioneering and engaging but also helped change mindsets and helped drive resonance for the brand.”
“The response to EMVIES this year have been the highest ever with record number of entries clearly indicative of popularity of the awards,” pointed out EMVIES Committee co-Chairperson Vikas Khanchandani, “The works entered has been extremely encouraging and impactful showcasing the changing dynamics of both clients and agencies towards curating campaigns through content to deliver ROI, outreach and execution scale.”
In his welcome address, The Advertising Club President Raj Nayak said “In its 16th year. The EMVIES has grown from strength to strength and this year has established a new record in the number of entries. With a jury consisting of over 225 media professionals and clients with judging held across Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi, this has been a mammoth exercise in making the process transparent.”
MAM
Nielsen launches co-viewing pilot to sharpen TV measurement
Super Bowl pilot to refine how shared TV audiences are counted
MUMBAI: Nielsen is taking a fresh stab at one of television’s oldest blind spots: how many people are actually watching the same screen. The audience-measurement giant on February 4 unveiled a co-viewing pilot that uses wearable devices to better capture shared viewing, starting with America’s biggest broadcast stage.
The trial begins with Super Bowl LX on NBC on February 8, 2026, before extending to other high-profile live sports and entertainment events in the first half of the year. The goal is simple but commercially potent: count viewers more accurately, especially during live spectacles that pull families and friends to one screen.
The new approach leans on Nielsen’s proprietary wearable meters, wrist-worn devices that resemble smartwatches. These passively capture audio signatures from TV content, logging exposure to shows, films and live events without requiring viewers to sign in or self-report. In theory, fewer clicks, fewer lapses, better data.
Karthik Rao, Nielsen’s ceo, cast the move as part of a broader measurement push. He said the company’s task is to keep pushing accuracy as clients invest heavily in live programming that draws mass audiences. The co-viewing pilot, he added, builds on upgrades such as Big Data + Panel measurement, out-of-home expansion, live-streaming metrics and wearable-based tracking.
Co-viewing is not new territory for Nielsen, which has long tried to estimate how many people sit before a single set. What is new is the heavier integration of wearables and passive detection to reduce reliance on active inputs from panel homes.
For now, the pilot comes with caveats. Co-viewing estimates from the trial will not be folded into Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel ratings, which remain the industry’s trading currency. Instead, pilot findings will be shared with clients a few weeks after final Big Data + Panel ratings are delivered. Clients may disclose those findings publicly.
More impact data will follow later this year. Full integration into Nielsen’s marketing-intelligence suite is slated as a longer-term play, with a target of bringing co-viewing into currency measurement for the 2026–2027 season. This is only phase one, with further co-viewing enhancements planned beyond 2026 and additional timelines to be announced.
The push fits a wider pattern. Nielsen has in recent years expanded big-data integration, adopted first-party data for live-streaming measurement and broadened out-of-home tracking. It also positions itself as the reference point for streaming metrics through products such as The Gauge and the Nielsen Streaming Top 10.
In a market where billions of ad dollars hinge on decimal points, counting who is in the room matters. If Nielsen can pin down shared viewing, the humble sofa could become prime measurement real estate. The race to count every eyeball just found a new wrist to watch.
Brands
Delhivery chairman Deepak Kapoor, independent director Saugata Gupta quit board
Gurugram: Delhivery’s boardroom is being reset. Deepak Kapoor, chairman and independent director, has resigned with effect from April 1 as part of a planned board reconstitution, the logistics company said in an exchange filing. Saugata Gupta, managing director and chief executive of FMCG major Marico and an independent director on Delhivery’s board, has also stepped down.
Kapoor exits after an eight-year stint that included steering the company through its 2022 stock-market debut, a period that saw Delhivery transform from a venture-backed upstart into one of India’s most visible logistics platforms. Gupta, who joined the board in 2021, departs alongside him, marking a simultaneous clearing of two senior independent seats.
“Deepak and Saugata have been instrumental in our process of recognising the need for and enabling the reconstitution of the board of directors in line with our ambitious next phase of growth,” said Sahil Barua, managing director and chief executive, Delhivery. The statement frames the exits less as departures and more as deliberate succession, a boardroom shuffle timed to the company’s evolving scale and strategy.
The resignations arrive amid broader governance recalibration. In 2025, Delhivery appointed Emcure Pharmaceuticals whole-time director Namita Thapar, PB Fintech founder and chairman Yashish Dahiya, and IIM Bangalore faculty member Padmini Srinivasan as independent directors, signalling a tilt towards consumer, fintech and academic expertise at the board level.
Kapoor’s tenure spanned Delhivery’s most defining years, rapid network expansion, public listing and the push towards profitability in a bruising logistics market. Gupta’s presence brought FMCG and brand-scale perspective during a period when ecommerce volumes and last-mile delivery economics were being rewritten.
The twin exits, effective from the new financial year, underscore a familiar corporate rhythm: founders consolidate, veterans rotate out, and fresh voices are ushered in to script the next chapter. In India’s hyper-competitive logistics race, even the boardroom does not stand still.
MAM
Meta appoints Anuvrat Rao as APAC head of commerce partnerships
At Locofy.ai, Rao helped convert a three-year free beta into a paid engine, clocking 1,000 subscribers and 15 enterprise clients within ten days of launch in September 2024. The low-code startup, backed by Accel and top tech founders, is famed for turning designs into production-ready code using proprietary large design models.
Before that, Rao founded generative AI venture 1Bstories, which was acquired by creative AI platform Laetro in mid-2024, where he briefly served as managing director for APAC. Alongside operating roles, he has been an active investor and advisor since 2020, backing startups such as BotMD, Muxy, Creator plus, Intellect, Sealed and CricFlex through a creator-economy-led thesis.
Rao spent over eight years at Google, holding senior partnership roles across search, assistant, chrome, web and YouTube in APAC, and earlier cut his teeth in strategy consulting at OC&C in London and investment finance at W. P. Carey in Europe and the US.
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