Executive Dossier

“”Earlier, acting in serials had a certain charm and exclusivity”

Published

23 years ago

February 6, 2003

Krutika Desai – a Cancerian-Gemini cusp, whose linguistic skills and liberalised outlook complement her dusky sensuous look.

Liberalised because on-screen as well as off it, she has strayed from the routine to plunge into unknown terrain. Still, she is conservative at heart and more of a family person. Krutika gives a lot of importance to family values but she admits that her near ones too sometimes don’t understand her; perhaps shades of eccentriciity often associated with her star-sign!

Desai was one of the early birds who jumped into the TV bandwagon during what she calls was boom time in the 1980s. Some of the serials she has worked on are Buniyaad, Chandrakanta, Zameen Aasmaan, Kismet, Hungama, Superhit Muqabla, A Mouthful of Sky and Mansi. Desai has done two feature films – one in Hindi and another in Bengali. She will be traveling to Israel for an English cross-over film in February 2003. She admits that she would love to do more feature films but wants to restrict her appearance on theatre and TV shows.

However, Desai has been appreciated in the role of Roopali Roopchand (Zee’s Lipstick) and Devanshi (Sony’s Kkusum) and her fan mail seems to be increasing day by day. Desai spoke to indiantelevision.com’s Ashwin Kotian. Excerpts:

Tell us about ‘Lipstick’? How did you bag the role?
Lipstick, the name itself is daringly different. It is a never-before show on Indian television. It was conceived with the intent of shocking the middle class sensibilities and presenting an unadulterated view of the upper class.

It was a bold theme and telecast appropriately in the 11 pm time slot. It is a departure from the run-of-the-mill fare and examined various issues like homosexuality and extramarital relationships.

Zee is very particular about the actors who are chosen for roles in the serials telecast on the channel. For the role of Roopali in Lipstick, Shrishti Arya (the producer) had already shot some scenes with two different actors.

Zee’s programming team wasn’t happy with the results and they urged Shrishti to look for someone else. The character Rupali is a pretty complex one – never played on TV before. It is the role of a fading actress who is on her way down. But she never accepts defeat and tries her best to rise to the top. It was then that the producers approached me.

“Roopali is a vain and hysterical woman. Unwilling to accept middle age and maturity gracefully. Roopali is known for her promiscuity and drinking problem”

Krutika Desai on her role in ‘Lipstick’

Can you tell us about your character Roopali in ‘Lipstick’?
Roopali Roopchand is a star – in the true sense of the word. She comes from a traditional middle class family and has paid dearly for her success. But it was a price she did not mind paying.

Till recently the most sought after heroined in the industry, today she finds newcomers like Kanchan Kumari have taken over her mantle.But Roopali is not prepared to let go. She thinks she can pull her career for another 10 years at least.

Roopali is a vain and hysterical woman, who is unwilling to accept middle age and maturity gracefully. Roopali is known for her promiscuity and drinking problem. She uses her connections in gossip columns to make headlines for herself, and to spread malice for others.

She thinks gossip will make her look younger in the eyes of the public. She is on the verge of schizophrenia and is paranoid about grey hair and wrinkling skin. Mention of younger actresses can send her into a flying temper. Her tantrums are growing by the day and she is losing her grip on her career.

What kind of effort went into the creating the persona for Roopali?
Zee’s programming team, the producer, the fashion designer Fabiya and I experimented a lot with the look and feel of the character. In the beginning, we decided to adopt a western look. Later, we decided to try out the Indian look with a saree.

We decided to use a lot of jewellery and different wigs. When the programming team saw the rushes, they liked me in a saree as it depicted someone who is modern as well as traditional in the same vein.

Finally, we crystallized on a mix in which I wore sarees, sleeveless blouses and several additional props. It is indeed how a modern Indian woman looks, talks and behaves.

The efforts that we made have been successful and the audience identifies with my depiction of the role. I have received feedback that the audience actually waits for my scenes. Even today, there are so many twists and turns as the character is evolving. Rupali has become more involved with the new man in her life.

“By TV standards, it was a bold thing to do..”

Krutika on the scene in ‘Lipstick’ where she is accosted by an intruder while taking a shower

Can you recount any memorable incident that happened during the shooting of ‘Lipstick’?
I still remember the second day of shooting in the first schedule. The scene involved my character Roopali being accosted by an intruder while she is taking a shower.

By TV standards, it was a bold thing to do and my producers made it clear that they would go ahead with the scene only with my permission. I was apprehensive initially but changed my mind later. I felt that there is a need to try out new and different things. Someone would do it for television eventually, so why couldn’t I don the mantle of ushering in something offbeat?

The shoot happened in a small AC studio and the water had become too cold for comfort. When the scene started rolling, I realized that the water was actually freezing. Within minutes, my teeth were chattering and my director Bhushan rushed to me with a towel. He was afraid that I would get pneumonia and wanted to complete the sequence as soon as possible.

Two cameras were used and mercifully my co-actor also cooperated. Later on, I got a congratulatory call from Bhushan who was seeing the rushes at the editing table. He told me that it was fabulous scene and I had delivered exactly what he had in mind.

Tell us about your recent entry into the ‘Kkusum’ storyline, which has been hyped up in the promos?
In Kkusum, my character Devanshi keeps everyone guessing. Devanshi took viewers by surprise when she arrived on the scene almost suddenly. Even now, my fans and people I meet ask me whether I am linked to Siddarth or Vikas Bhalla or someone else. There is a certain amount of intrigue and mystique around Devanshi. Sometimes, she appears so very nice and good; at other times, she seems to be conniving and manipulating. At any point of time, she seems to have something up her sleeve. Balaji’s creative team and the producer Ekta Bahri have really worked hard on the character, her portrayal, her look and the hype around her entry. Here again, the look is very traditional but glamourous – and I use a lot of heavy jewellery.

“My life doesn’t revolve around acting as I feel that there are different dimensions to my persona”

Krutika on herself

Are you different from the characters you portray?
I am passionate about my home and my privacy. My life doesn’t revolve around acting as I feel that there are different dimensions to my persona.

There is a broader spectrum which includes my hobbies like reading, cooking and traveling. I see myself as a housewife, as a mother as much as I see myself as an actress.

I have become very selective in choosing my roles. I love wearing western clothes – preferably jeans, T-shirts and tracks. I don’t like frills. I love traveling and getting glimpses into the diverse cultures of places I visit. For instance, I would love to go to Egypt as against New York. I would love to go to Northern Thailand; basically I am a mountain person and not a beach person. I enjoy taking long walks in the forests and spending my time amidst nature.I also love river rafting as I find it to be a stimulating experience.

As far as food is concerned, I am vegetarian and stay away from fried food. I love cooking and try out different recipes; but I prefer to eat simple plain food.

Have things changed since you started your TV stint?
Seven years ago, things were very different. It was peak time in terms of money and job satisfaction. There were fewer channels – primarily DD1 and DD metro channels; lesser serials and everyone used to watch the serials on air. Acting in serials had a certain charm and exclusivity.

Due to all these reasons, there was a greater amount of fame and star value – as we used to call it. People who acted in those serials were major stars and became famous almost overnight. In those days, I used to work on as many as seven shows on DD and later Zee – Buniyaad, Chandrakanta, Zameen Aasmaan, Kismet, Hungama, Superhit Muqabla, A Mouthful of Sky and Mansi.

These days, everyone is doing TV and serials are dime a dozen. Everybody doesn’t watch all the serials – some people don’t watch anything at all and have shifted loyalties to other types of shows.

The working conditions have deteriorated. Earlier, we used to have our own make-up man, attendant and room. Currently, TV actors don’t get even the basic amenities; unless they demand and bargain for a better deal from the producers.

Earlier we used to do three to four scenes and in the present scenario, eight or even nine scenes are the order of the day. There is so much more stress that one can actually feel it. The difference in attitude is so clearly visible in terms of the hectic pace of work – everything and everyone seems to suggest “Do it fast and then take on more work”!

“The working conditions have deteriorated. Earlier we used to have our own make-up man, attendant and room. Currently, TV actors and actresses don’t get even the basic amenities; unless they demand and bargain a better deal from the producers”

Krutika on how things have changed in the TV industry

What are the current projects you are working on?
Last year, I did a Gujarati play Shodh Pratishodh which won rave reviews and accolades from the masses as well as the classes. We did 125 shows in four months – a record by itself. I plan to do one play every year but I shall be very selective about my roles and characters.

I have done two films Insaaf (mainstream commercial film) and a Bengali film Dastak (very different and offbeat). I shall be going off to Israel to shoot for an English feature film. It’s about an Indian couple settling down in an alien country and coping with the differences in culture. On TV, I am currently working with Zee and Sony. There are some offers and I am exploring the opportunities.

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Executive Dossier

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

Published

1 month 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.