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Garmin brings in Yeshudas Pillai as country head

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Mumbai: Garmin India, the popular brand of smartwatches in the fitness and wellness segment, has roped in Yeshudas Pillai as the country head for its India operations. His appointment is in line with the company’s objective to drive growth and development of the brand. With this appointment, the brand wants to intensify its focus to reach a larger set of audiences, speed up growth initiatives, and elevate its brand positioning.

Pillai will be based in Delhi. In his new role, he will be driving stakeholder engagement, growth, and development of the brand in India. With over 16 years of experience, Pillai has worked for prestigious consumer electronics, consumer durables, FMCG, and premium lifestyle brands.

Garmin is looking at strengthening its presence in India and continues to grow by double digits. The brand aims to boost its business continuously in India.

Addressing the occasion, Garmin’s regional director of South-East Asia & India Sky Chen said, “At Garmin, we firmly believe in prioritising the needs of our consumers. We see great potential in the Indian market, where we’ve recorded 32 per cent YoY growth until Q3’22, as per Garmin Connect. Venu series from the wellness segment contributed the most, with a 65 per cent YoY growth till Q3’22 as per Garmin Connect.”

He added, “We have seen a growth in the preference for mid-high range ($300 and above) smartwatches over the last couple of years in India. Looking at this trend, we are bullish on the premium segment and plan to expand our offerings. Also, there is a sharp increase in the activity trend, where we see uptake in outdoor activities that resonate well with our product line. For Garmin, we see India becoming one of the top three markets in the Asia region in the next five years.”

Welcoming Pillai, Chen said, “Pillai’s multitude of experience and strong track record in the consumer space make him an integral part of our team and will further our vision for the Indian market. With his result-driven professionalism, we look forward to bringing in the required momentum to our business growth in India.”

Joining Garmin, Pillai quipped, “I have always been a great believer in innovation and technology and the potential it has to change the moving world. I am excited to join the Garmin team and accelerate its growth in India. I look forward to working with the Garmin global leadership team and providing strategic impetus for strengthening the company’s foothold in India. Our vision is to strengthen our presence across the country, where we aim to have more than 10 Garmin brand stores by the end of 2023.”

After setting the precedent with its quality and premium products, Garmin currently has brand stores in Delhi NCR, Bangalore, and Pune. By the end of 2023, the brand aims to expand its presence across markets by opening brand stores, which will also double up as service collection points. Garmin has been known for cutting-edge GPS navigation products for almost three decades. Some of the recently launched product offerings in India embody Garmin’s philosophy of offering users compelling design and superior quality at a competitive price. With an aim to strengthen its positioning across India, the brand will bolster its data monitoring mechanism with ‘Garmin Health API’.

Garmin aims to get closer to its diverse user community through new partners across markets to offer all the latest Garmin products, including the newly launched Venu SQ 2 and Forerunner 955 & 255 series.

MAM

Nielsen launches co-viewing pilot to sharpen TV measurement

Super Bowl pilot to refine how shared TV audiences are counted

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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.

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Delhivery chairman Deepak Kapoor, independent director Saugata Gupta quit board

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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.

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MAM

Meta appoints Anuvrat Rao as APAC head of commerce partnerships

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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.

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