Executive Dossier

This decade belongs to the ed-tech industry: Practically’s Mahadev Srivatsa

Published

4 years ago

November 1, 2021

The ed-tech sector in India is witnessing unprecedented growth owing to the accelerated adoption of technology. The pandemic further strengthened the trend, with schools, colleges, and educational institutes shifting online, paving the way for the rise of several ed-tech start-ups. Claiming to be India’s first experiential learning app that brings learning alive through immersive videos, interactive augmented reality, and 3D simulations for 6th to 12th graders Practically is one such startup that also scripted its success story during the time.

Mahadev Srivatsa, who spearheads the brand team as the ed-tech’s VP – marketing & brand strategy, is on a mission to make Practically a household name in India. An evangelist marketer and brand strategist with a keen eye for consumer insight, and over 13 years of cross-industry experience in brand launch & integrated marketing campaigns, Srivatsa has worked across telecom, consumer electronics, auto, and FMCG to name a few. He was recently adjudged Winner in the Thought Leaders category at Voot.

Srivatsa, who has been previously associated with organisations such as Vodafone-Idea, ASUS India, H&R Johnson India among others, brought in a unique acumen on how traditional and new-age digital mediums can be leveraged to build a brand. He is credited with launching the brand’s first integrated marketing campaign, including crafting the brand proposition, the campaign strategy, and successful rollout that resulted in a 3X growth in both business and brand objectives. The brand’s first national campaign launched earlier last month, ‘Scan Anything’- a disruptive feature that enables students to learn from their everyday observations – also saw a 2X growth in terms of search volumes.

IndianTelevision’s Anupama Sajeet caught up with the marketer and branding professional for a freewheeling conversation on an overview of the ed-tech marketing space and digitisation in education. Srivatsa also shared insights on the start-up’s roadmap ahead and the role of online education platforms in lieu of the scheduled reopening of schools and institutes for offline teaching in the coming days…

Edited excerpts…

On what differentiates Practically from other online learning platforms

As India’s first experiential learning app designed for students in classes of 6th-12th with a focus on STEM learning, our content is 3D, immersive, and experiential which makes learning fun and engaging for kids. We have a very comprehensive content of 3000+ world-class 3D videos, 1000+ Simulations / AR experiences and are constantly working to make our library amongst the largest. We are also the world’s first ed-tech company to launch the #ScanAnything feature which transforms the mobile camera into an educational tool allowing learners to interact with surrounding elements freely. It can recognise pictures, questions, exercises, proofs, etc., from textbooks, magazines, newspapers including capturing images of any surrounding objects and presenting linked curriculum learning information on the app for the learners to pick their learning journey and resolve doubts instantly.

On the challenges faced by the brand to penetrate this increasingly crowded sector

In ed-tech, the consumer and the customer are different, so the marketing challenge is always to create a campaign that appeals to both sets of audiences. The TG for the campaign was parents of kids of 6-12 grades and kids themselves. The other challenge was communication in a cluttered market, given the amount of SOV (share of voice) by competition in this space of late. Hence the challenge was also to develop communication that breaks the clutter and gets noticed. And finally, we had to do justice to the ScanAnything feature not just in terms of creating awareness about the feature but also the claim that it’s the first by an ed-tech company.

So, the entire campaign communication was developed to get the perfect balance of keeping the campaign look & feel to reflect the world-class tech and product offering as the hero and at the same time appeal to our younger TG which likes to see communication that is light, snackable and fun. To make the feature believable and showcase its robustness, we designed the print ad in a manner that users could try out this innovative feature straight out of the ad.

On Practically’s first national campaign

Given the need to promote this innovative ed-tech feature, the campaign is digital-first with a robust focus on print. The entire campaign was meticulously planned in four phases starting from teasers on social media to launch, post-launch and sustenance. The digital campaign kick-started with the launch of two films on YouTube and a national press release around the campaign proposition of #StopSearchingStartScanning. The films centered around the feature and the tech as the hero.

A print ad every week for three weeks on leading national and regional dailies was planned to drive awareness and credibility and was uniquely designed to make people engage with the feature. A robust influencer plan with a mix of celebs, micro and macro influencers at a Pan-India level was also executed to create buzz. We will continue to deploy influencers in the future as well. As a medium this is something no marketer can afford to ignore given the digital age, we are in.

On the key take-aways post the brand’s campaign launch

The campaign has been well received with over seven million views for our films so far across all social media platforms. We were at four lakh installs before the campaign and in just over a month have grown at a record speed of almost three times to cross one million installs which was our key campaign KPI. All our in-app metrics (MAU, DAU) have witnessed exponential growth and we recently hit more than 1 lakh MAU (Monthly Active Users). More importantly, we are able to sustain the growth as the campaign reaches its final leg. With respect to the feature, on average so far, we are getting 10,000-15,000 scans a day with the highest being 33,000 on the day of our first print ad. We have had six lakh scans since the launch of the campaign indicating the likeability of the feature and the marketing impact. We have also seen a 2X growth in terms of search volumes.

On the media mix, the brand looks to target

The choice of medium for marketing is always dependent on the product and TG. As a marketer, one always selects the optimum media mix desired for a launch or communication. Being an app, our communication will always be digital-first. Going forward, digital and TV alongside print will be the preferred choice for us. With pandemic almost looking like an endemic now, OOH also can be a good bet as a support medium.

While Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra are our key markets, we have already gone national with this campaign and will continue to make strides deeper into these markets. As we enter new geographies, our focus will be primarily metro & tier 1one towns for now. We are also present in the Middle East and are expanding rapidly.

On plans to scale up the brand marketing in 2021

Getting a million downloads is a dream for any app and is usually the first key milestone and we are delighted at the pace with which we have achieved it, especially the last mile. All our future marketing campaigns will only be bigger in scale than the previous, given our objective is to make Practically the most loved and trusted e-learning brand. The next goal is three million and then eventually 5ive million installs by this financial year for which we have already started planning the next marketing campaign.

On the role of online education platforms going forward, with schools reopening

We believe that technology adoption in the education sector is yet to see its peak and the growth trajectory is likely to continue beyond the pandemic years. The lockdown induced by the pandemic has produced a paradigm shift in learners’ behaviour leading to an exponential increase in the demand for ed-tech products in India. As consumers are more aware of the offerings and accessibility, the urge to learn beyond the syllabus will help in bringing in innovations in learning. With steep competition, players need to modify their offerings to engage consumers constantly. With the implementation of the New Education Policy, online learning in higher education will further experience accelerated adoption as people focus more on upskilling and reskilling.

Also, in what has probably been the biggest change in ed-tech marketing, today every player wants to be a ‘Brand’ and more importantly behave like one! With the pandemic firmly establishing the trend of blended learning, this decade is looking like the decade of ed-tech in India.

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Executive Dossier

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

Published

2 weeks 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

2 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.