Connect with us

MAM

E-comms step forward to help tide over Covid second wave

Published

5 years ago

on

MUMBAI: With India battling a deadly second wave of the pandemic, night curfews and partial-to-near-complete lockdowns seem to be the norm in many parts of the country. The last couple of weeks in particular have been more devastating with the nation witnessing an unprecedented pan-India surge in Covid cases. India Inc is stepping on the gas to ensure that employees and their families get vaccinated as soon as possible. MNC consumer goods company Procter & Gamble, on Monday pledged Rs 50 crores towards ten lakh vaccine doses covering five lakh Indians.

E-comms are also going the extra mile to ensure protection of their associates, including delivery staff, while guaranteeing safe delivery of orders to customers. With movement restrictions being introduced in additional parts of the country, buyers are taking the safety route of shopping from home. This has resulted in driving bigger orders for e-commerce companies across India.

Here are some of the efforts undertaken by online platforms in the fight against Covid2019:

Food delivery app Swiggy last month took the initiative of supporting the vaccination cost for its entire delivery fleet. The company announced on its Twitter handle: “From essentials to food, delivery partners have always been our lifelines. We’re happy to announce that we’re supporting 100 per cent of the vaccination cost for our entire delivery fleet, and that this entire drive will be facilitated by us to keep them and you safe. #DeliveringHope”

Food & Grocery app Grofers took the initiative of using its platform to set up a real-time data of all Covid2019 resources, including city-wise databases and helpline numbers. It shared on its blog, “A lot of people are currently overwhelmed and struggling to find relevant information on what to do and what measures to take if they or someone they know is currently affected by the virus. We thought we could use our platform to help a bit here. To help make this a slightly less cumbersome process we have aggregated some of the publicly available information for your convenience, so you do not have to go looking for it in different places.”

Grofers has also partnered with UNICEF to encourage people across the country to get vaccinated. It tweeted :“When you get vaccinated, you potentially safeguard yourself and your family from Covid2019. Here is our little way of expressing our appreciation for those who have taken this important step.”

E-commerce giant Flipkart went all-out in its measures to ensure a safe working environment for all its employees and stakeholders across the board. The company took to its twitter handle to share a video on the same. “We stand strong in our commitment to safety. Our priority remains the well-being of our employees, customers, sellers, and our entire ecosystem. Watch for the various measures we continue to implement to ensure  #SafeCommerce for all.”

The firm has also been lending its helping hand to deliver Covid care medical kits. Official Twitter handle of infrastructure & industrial development department of the Uttar Pradesh government tweeted lauding the company’s efforts, which included delivering over 3,000 covidcare medical kits free of charge.

Food delivery app Zomato had in 2020 taken steps to educate the riders and restaurants on safety and hygiene practices, provided them with COVID insurance, masks, and facilitated hand sanitisation stations at restaurants across the country. This time the Food delivery app has rolled out a feature for “Covid emergencies”. Zomato Founder Deepinder Goyal tweeted, “Today, along with thousands of our restaurant partners, we just rolled out a “priority delivery for covid emergencies” feature on the Zomato app. This feature will allow our customers to mark *This order is related to a Covid2019 emergency* option during checkout.

These orders will be prioritised by providing fastest rider assignment, and dedicated customer support in case of queries. Thousands of restaurants have pledged to prioritise these orders in their kitchen above all others.

In addition, the firm’s not-for-profit arm Zomato Feeding India has kickstarted a Help Save My India endeavour in association with @delhivery to source oxygen concentrators and related supplies to help hospitals and families in need.

Early this month, Urban Company (formerly UrbanClap) – a managed marketplace for home services, committed towards getting 100 per cent of their fleet vaccinated, free of cost in the coming weeks. “We have already initiated phase 1 of this effort for service partners aged 45+, and are working closely with local govts and healthcare providers.

With the government now allowing vaccination for all above 18 starting 1 May, @urbancompany_UC further reiterated its commitment. “ @urbancompany_UC is committed to getting all our front lines service professionals and employees vaccinated at the earliest possible availability,” tweeted Urban Company co-founder Abhiraj Singh Bhal  @abhirajbhal .

Tata Group’s Online apparel brand TATA CLIQ chose to take a step back by reminding everyone that ‘It’s Time To Pause’. It urged its customers to think again before making a purchase on the app. Declaring that ‘Today Community takes precedence over Commerce’ the brand sent out communication to its subscribers and on its webpage saying “Sometimes it takes courage to pause, to listen to what the heart already knows. We encourage you to pause and ask yourself – do you really need to buy this now? Just because someone else carries it well doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy.”

It added “Out of respect for our stakeholders, we are open for commerce – so we will still deliver your orders, take your calls, process returns and refunds – but we will not penalise our delivery team on road for a day of delayed delivery, we will not focus on the number of calls made in an hour by our customer care executives, we will not allow colleagues at our warehouse to travel via public transport and expose themselves and their families to risk.” 

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

MAM

Nielsen launches co-viewing pilot to sharpen TV measurement

Super Bowl pilot to refine how shared TV audiences are counted

Published

22 hours ago

on

February 4, 2026

By

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.

Continue Reading

Brands

Delhivery chairman Deepak Kapoor, independent director Saugata Gupta quit board

Published

5 days ago

on

January 31, 2026

By

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.

Continue Reading

MAM

Meta appoints Anuvrat Rao as APAC head of commerce partnerships

Published

5 days ago

on

January 31, 2026

By

SINGAPORE: Anuvrat Rao has taken charge as APAC  head of commerce and signals partnerships at Meta, steering monetisation deals across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp from Singapore. The former Google executive, known for launching Google Assistant, PWAs, AMP and Firebase across Asia-Pacific, steps into the role after a high-growth stint as chief business officer at Locofy.ai.

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.

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2026 Indian Television Dot Com PVT LTD