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Scarecrow’s growth plans after 4 wins this magic week

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MUMBAI: For founder-promoters Raghu Bhat, Manish Bhatt and Arunava Joy Sengupta, this week has been a turning point with their two-year-four-month-old agency recording four wins in the week.

Scarecrow Communications‘ prize catch has been the consolidation of Religare‘s account. The agency will now handle the creative duties of Religare Broking, Religare Health Insurance, Religare Macquarie and Religare Arts Initiative for its first client. The next line of attack will be to bag Religare‘s mutual fund that is under the care of Ogilvy.
Bhatt recollects those early days when the agency‘s name was not even firmed up. “When we first started with Religare Macquarie (a joint venture), Scarecrow did not exist. Our cards read Raghu, Manish and Joy and the address was of a coffee shop where we used to meet. We had pitched along with the likes of Ogilvy, Law and Kenneth, Lowe and TBWA and managed to win the account as a bunch of individuals. Scarecrow exists today because of that. Religare has been very lucky for us,” he says.

The week‘s other two wins are significant in another sense as Scarecrow prepares to expand its operations geographically while widening its client portfolio. Emami is Kolkata-based while Justbooks, a community library firm, hails from Bengaluru. The fourth win will be announced soon and Bhatt is not ready to talk about it.

Having offices in Mumbai and Delhi, Scarecrow is now planning to have a presence in both Kolkata and Bengaluru. Though the creative idea shop has around 35 clients across Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru and Kolkata, the servicing so far is done from the Mumbai and Delhi offices.

The Scarecrow Trio – Arunava, Manish & Raghu

The Scarecrow Trio – Arunava, Manish & Raghu
Scarecrow’s next target is setting a base is the eastern metro of Kolkata. Apart from the recently won Emami Healthy & Tasty edible oil account, Scarecrow already services five of innerwear manufacturer Rupa’s brands – Frontline, Kidline, Euro, Thermocot and Bumchums, also based out of the City of Joy.

Scarecrow believes in first building a client list in a region before setting up shop there. “We prefer having clients and slowly building our reputation before setting up an office in these centres. This makes working easier. That is the way we set up the Delhi office,” says Bhatt.

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The six-month-old Delhi office has helped Scarecrow expand its client portfolio, winning most of the agency‘s new businesses. Housing 10 people, it services five major brands – Eristoff, Bacardi, MVI Mobiles, DLF and PentAir.

“We plan to bring on board new clients and double our team in Delhi. Incidentally, the Delhi office gets us maximum new businesses, surpassing even the Mumbai headquarters,” informs Bhatt.

Scarecrow‘s future strategy is to work with more companies that have a cluster of brands, products and services under them. It is already associated with brands like Future Capital, DNA, Viacom 18, Nestle, Quikr, MVL & Pentair.

“Working with such companies not only gives an agency exposure and experience but also makes expansion of brand portfolio easier. There is a tuning of sorts and both the parties are acquainted with each other’s style of working and expectations,” explains Bhatt.

The agency is eager to work with more brands across various categories. “We are pretty strong in the financial services category as we have already done work for Religare, Axis bank etc. FMCG is the most sustainable category for any agency as recession and slowdown do not really have a big bearing on it. They give you a good strength. We were already in the FMCG category but we have never planned communication for an edible oil brand. So it will be a learning experience for us too,” avers Bhatt.

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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.

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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.

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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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