Executive Dossier

We focus on employee learning & development: Rohit Suri, GroupM

Published

8 years ago

October 30, 2017

We care about you: that’s the message GroupM sends to its employees. While most others are scrambling to get out of the office on Friday, you will see GroupM employees dancing to Zumba or meditating away their worries through Yoga. What others may term ‘indulgence’ is an ‘investment’ for the media agency that revels in its employees’ holistic well-being.

It is not surprising then that GroupM bagged the silver medal at the HR Excellence Awards 2017, which awards companies for outstanding human capital strategy and execution. Its efforts in nurturing and maintaining a high-calibre talent pool entail keeping the retention rate higher than the industry benchmark.

Over the last few years, GroupM India has created a standard of excellence for several tangible and intangible employee benefits. The mAdvantage programme of 2015 has since rolled out several initiatives designed around employee healthcare and holistic wellness. Flexible timings and work-from-home policies allow employees to manage their career and personal lives.

IndianTelevision caught up with GroupM chief HR and talent officer at South Asia Rohit Suri to understand what makes the network a winner year after year, how do they ensure a healthy work-life balance and much more. Excerpts:

Another year, another Award! How does it feel to get recognised globally for your work done here in India?

This is a validation of how employees feel about us internally within our system in India and the global team and how India is performing and what India is doing for its employees. This is one external validation for us. Our endeavour has been to maintain a positive work-life balance and move towards work-life integration. We make continuous changes to our policies and practices in line with the changing social and business realities. With the help of technology and a stellar team of thorough professionals, we are today one of the most preferred employers in our industry.

What do you do to ensure a happy work place?

We believe in total rewards, where we know compensation alone cannot keep employees happy in the company and we cannot rely on it to retain them as there will always be someone who is willing to pay more in the market. The benefits, engagement programmes, growth and development opportunities that a company provides contributes largely to make any workplace a happy workplace. We have an internal online system called as, Jobfy, where any employee at GroupM can apply for any position internally in India, Asia pacific or globally. In today’s time, people want to change roles every 2-3 years and since we have so many diverse roles in the organisation, they can move internally. We have seen a lot of our employees move from India to Singapore, Vietnam, China and the US.

We are deeply focussed on our employees’ learning and development. In the first 6 months of 2017, we have trained around 500 people in office hours and 1700 people on varying hours since we started using digital. We also undertake several employee welfare and engagement programmes, where an entire week is dedicated to wellness and there are doctors and dieticians on site.

We have recently launched an AI-based online platform where employees can chat with each other, giving us an insight as to how they feel at work and if we see a concerning message, we address it immediately.

What are your leave policies and work from home policies?

We have flexible timings and those who want to work from home can do so once every two weeks. If the employees want to come in late and leave early, they can do that too, because we want people to spend time with their families and loved ones. As CVL Srinivas says, ‘everyone should be able to see the sunset with their family.’

Do you have certain special policies rolled out for female employees?

GroupM is a gender-neutral organisation but we do have specific programmes for women employees. Maxus Media organises Work the Talk initiative, where women are trained globally to make sure they break the glass ceiling in the organisation. From a safety perspective, if a woman employee has to stay back in the office until late hours, we have cabs to drop them home. In a city like Delhi, which is not considered safe, we ensure our security personnel drop them at home safely. If she is flying in late in the night, we make sure she is provided with a cab and reaches home safely.

What are the challenges one has to face in the changing dynamics of the industry?

It is more of being ahead of the curve and being proactive rather than a challenge. GroupM has an open-door culture where anyone can reach out to anyone. We encourage speaking out and having a conversation with each other and counsellors. One might often see CVL Srinivas having lunch with the team in the cafeteria and having a conversation with them. We are very transparent in nature and want people to know our business agendas, our challenges, our focus and everything else.

Is it difficult to maintain a healthy work-life balance with changing social and business realities?

There are two ways to look at it. One has to be innovative in terms of how they manage it. Digital has caused disruption and the pace of change is quick. Technology can make our life easier now. The social fabric is changing and with millennials coming into force, their thought process is very different. A lot of people are very ambitious in India and they just need the right direction.

What more needs to be done in the Indian media environment to make sure there is a healthy work-life balance?

At the end of the day, polices are just frameworks and you have to continue to look at best practices followed globally and see if they can work in India. An organisation must also come up with newer practices that will work in their company and it is an ongoing process.

The recent allegations against film mogul Harvey Weinstein have sparked a global conversation about the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. What precautionary measures does GroupM take to ensure women safety?

We have established the Vishakha committee (Prevention of Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace) across all our offices, which are headed by women. GroupM has Zero tolerance for harassment at any level. If any such act is seen happening, the conversation will happen immediately and we would not want it to be encouraged. There has to be mutual respect and you need a very healthy environment to work in but some things are unacceptable and we don’t shy away from taking immediate actions. That could mean suspension or termination but we will never shy away from taking stringent and strict actions against any kind of sexual harassment.

What more does the industry need to do to help sustain a healthy work environment?

I can only speak for GroupM and as of today, the way we work is very simple. If we think there is need to change this, we will change that. Period! We constantly get feedback from employees on what more could be done and we do that. If in Delhi, a woman needs to be accompanied while going back home it will be implemented and when we felt that people should not stay back till late, that was also implemented.

What makes employees stay back at GroupM?

Everything depends on the culture of the organisation. Culture could be defined by the policies of the organisation, people you hire, how you interact with one another, how quick you deliver, delivery of output and passion.

Related Topics:development GroupM Rohit Suri Yoga

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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

2 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.