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Tag: Alibaba

  • Priyadarshan Garg takes charge as IDPL’s chief business officer

    Priyadarshan Garg takes charge as IDPL’s chief business officer

    MUMBAI: From print to pixels, Priyadarshan Garg knows how to make headlines. The seasoned media executive has now stepped into a new chapter as chief business officer at Indiadotcom Digital Private Limited (IDPL), the digital arm of Zee Media Corporation Limited.

    The move is more than just a leadership shuffle. It signals IDPL’s ambitions to scale up its digital-first strategy, sharpen its editorial edge and build content ecosystems that attract both audiences and advertisers.

    Garg brings more than 25 years of industry experience, with stints at Zee5, Alibaba, Dainik Bhaskar and TV Today. Known for combining newsroom instincts with business smarts, he has already made waves at IDPL since joining in April by driving the successful launch of Pinewz, one of the company’s fastest-growing digital-first ventures.

    In his new role, he will steer editorial direction, unlock revenue opportunities and strengthen IDPL’s position as a digital powerhouse. As he put it, “Digital is not just about content delivery. It is about creating immersive and trustworthy ecosystems where audiences feel engaged and empowered. At IDPL, I see huge potential to harness data, technology and creativity to fuel growth while maintaining the highest standards of journalism.”

    Zee Media Corporation Limited, ceo, Karan Abhishek Singh welcomed him on board and said, “Priyadarshan’s leadership comes at a crucial time when IDPL is scaling new heights in digital reach and influence. His industry insight and ability to deliver transformative strategies will play a vital role in shaping IDPL’s future.”

    For IDPL, the appointment is a step towards reimagining digital journalism in India. With Garg at the helm, the focus will be on truth-driven storytelling, innovative formats and building long-term value for users and partners alike.
     

  • Sportel Monaco 2024: back with a bang

    Sportel Monaco 2024: back with a bang

    MUMBAI: Less than a fortnight from now,  sports media and tech executives from all over the world will be flying into Nice, France to get to the lovely principality of Monaco. The occasion: Sportel, Monaco, which is being held from 28-30 October 2024 in the famed Grimaldi Forum.

    They will spend the three days will be spent  hobnobbing, networking, exchanging ideas and doing deals as Sportel hosts industry leaders for three days of conferences, and exhibitions centred around the most important market floor for sports media.

    Sportel Monaco is expected to attract influential industry players, such as the legendary Laliga president, Javier Tebas and for the first time following the broadcast success of Paris 2024, OBS CEO  and OCS  executive director Yiannis Exarchos, Alibaba group director & president J. Michael Evans, among many more, to discuss the key trends and innovations shaping the future of sports media. A rich programme of expert masterclasses and case study presentations, plus a new sports and generative AI workshop in collaboration with SVG, will complement the business activities and meetings throughout the three-day event. 

    “I am committed to upholding the high standards of excellence that have always defined our event. This year is already shaping up to be a great success, with the exhibition space nearly sold out and the addition of a new conference innovation stage to accommodate an even richer programme,” said Sportel Monaco executive director Loris Menoni.”More new features are coming before the event begins, including an inspiring women’s Lunch, to shape the world of business and beyond. I am excited to welcome our community back to Monaco for what promises to be an exceptional event.”  

    According to data on the Sportel Monaco website, more than 1,501 participants globally have registered to participate in this year’s edition. Additionally, for the very first time, Indiantelevision.com has partnered with the sports confab and is going to be attending the event.

    Amongst the Indian companies in attendance figure: Citadel Advisory group (Rahul Johri), Quidich (Gaurav Mehta, Jaskaran Singh Bakshi), Rajasthan Royals Sports group (Jake LushMccrum), Spectatr (Richa Singh, Manjush Mangal, Rijul Dutta & Shifa Garg),  MultiTV Tech Solutions (Sandeep Bansal, Varun Mathur, Puneet Kumar & Vikas Somata), FanCode (Mandela Kiran) and Indian Television Dot Com’s India Spark, represented by CEO Khalid Khan.

    And they are all ready for some sporting action – off the pitch, of course.

  • Alibaba – Building a new model for marketing

    Alibaba – Building a new model for marketing

    MUMBAI: As we approach a new decade, what were once predictions are today a reality. Some of these are – India enjoys a demographic dividend, smartphone and internet penetration is constantly growing, consumer appetite is expanding beyond established markets and coming from emerging India as well. Additionally, India is now the fastest growing economy in the world. This bodes well when you weigh the potential of the market. What comes next is attracting audiences and making it easier for brands to reach consumers.

    This was the subject of a talk at the 44th International Advertising Association’s World Congress in Kochi by Chris Tung, Chief Marketing Officer, Alibaba Group. For any brand to enter a consumer’s discovery cycle that straddles Awareness, Interest, Purchase, and then Loyalty; brands need to do much more in the digital age. The need is for a cohesive, evolving, data-led ecosystem that involves content marketing, understanding consumption patterns, lifestyle preferences, and more. Through this data-led engagement, brands have the opportunity to become far more relevant to their target audiences. The data-led model allows for brands to experiment with campaigns readily and sometimes even optimise entire marketing strategies for customer acquisition.

    Alibaba has been instrumental in achieving a data-led model that it terms as uni-marketing that allows brands access to insights based on data that are anonymised and aggregated down segments that number one million in size. This allows for a test-bed that at the very least has a million users. And the results have been promising for Alibaba and the brands that leverage its platforms. Alibaba reports 50% year on year revenue growth. For brands that leverage a data-led approach championed through uni-marketing at Alibaba – in some cases, time to launch has come down to nine months from 18 months. There are more top-sellers per brand today across categories. The real power of uni-marketing shone through with an insight provided to Mars Inc., wherein Alibaba suggested a chilli-infused chocolate treat to the global confectioner. The result? Between August of 2017 and March of 2018, sales of Snickers Spicy surpassed USD 1.43 million dollars with a 92% satisfaction rating among consumers.

    That’s just the success of one product and one brand. When you scale this data-led engine out to engage with millions of users – what you arrive at is an e-commerce platform that brings brands and consumers closer to each other and a record sitting USD 30.8 billion Singles’ Day in 2018. To break that down further – that’s the ability to drive 300,000 transactions per second.

  • Guest Column: The changing landscape of ‘Festive Marketing’

    Guest Column: The changing landscape of ‘Festive Marketing’

    Festive season is a time when marketing spends by brands shoot through the roof – and for good reason. This is the time when most high-ticket purchases are made, or if not, influenced. Because of these, most products have huge discounts going on their platforms or brands. While classically, this translates to a month of festivities, but eventually encapsulates the last quarter of October, November, and December.

    As a result, most of the brands spend most of their marketing budgets in the last quarter of the year, typically October – December period which starts from Onam, Ganpati and gains pace with Dussehra- Diwali. Last quarter spend accounts nearly 30 per cent of the annual advertising spends. With the digital sector booming, brands use digital platforms to advertise and leverage them to the utmost in the festive season.

    In 2016, we witnessed a short festive period with Dussehra. This was primarily because of Diwali falling in the same month of October. Then there was demonetization and GST. In 2017, the annual ad spends was a little better with 18-20 per cent growth over last year, however the demand was still below par. What we witnessed was not a very “Happy Diwali” in last two years.

    Marketers predicted that in 2018, the festive season would bounce back with both on-demand higher share of ad spends as compared to 2017. However, the third quarter of 2018, we witnessed one of the biggest calamities when floods hit God’s own country- Kerala, devastating the entire southern region of India. Marketers lost hundreds of crores of media revenues as they could not gauge the Onam spirit as everyone was occupied in restoring the region. The entire marketing community was toned down to pay their respects and take cognizance of what had happened. 

    Which brings us to the next question – what would be the sentiment of market in the last quarter (October- December period)? Will brands take a cautious approach in ad spends, worried about the lost opportunities in the previous quarter? Or the brands would go full boom in ad spends & make up with the lost opportunities in the previous quarter. Time will tell. 

    My guess is that to make up for the lost time & opportunities, basis the previous quarter, it would make complete sense for the brands to go full throttle. We have already seen how three prominent e-tailers – Amazon, Flipkart & Snapdeal have started screaming discounts on everything in national newspapers, indicating the trend for next three months. 

    Prominent roadblock properties like the Big Billion Day sales are planned around the festive season for the same reason. While these were initially believed to be rub-offs of international trends done by international giants like Alibaba, they have managed to gather a life of their own. And as a result, one cannot see this fading out of consumer behaviour anytime soon.  

    As a prediction, it is safe to say that we are definitely in a better position than the last two previous years. This is primarily due to the fact that the festivals themselves have spread out across the calendar, thus giving the marketer more time and bandwidth to plan their campaigns and spends. Secondly, the consumer is keen to cash in on the festive season this year because the previous ones have been damp. But the informed marketer will only take a cautious approach – not going too wild with ad spends, while ensuring that the right sentiments and passion points of the targeted consumer are hit upon.

    One can expect the digital spends to be primarily fuelled by e-commerce players, mobile manufacturers, automotive sector and BFSI. One can already see full spreads in print with the launch of latest gadgets, massive discounts on consumer goods and more. As the Diwali festival approaches, one can only expect the movement to gather more steam. What’s more, the consumer is always in the green. Even if they miss out on one ecommerce player, they have a lot more to fall back upon. And this number is only increasing. Even e-wallets like a Paytm have their own sale happening this year. It only goes to show that there are enough and more choices for the end consumer to park their monies in new products. 

    All in all, one can only hope that we have a truly Happy Diwali this time!

    The author is VP & Head- Business Development, Grapes Digital. The opinions expressed here are his own and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them.

  • UC Ads lends a hand to individual content creators in India

    UC Ads lends a hand to individual content creators in India

    MUMBAI: Mobile marketing in India is no longer a side dish. It’s the entree.  Brands know today that they need to invest a good chunk of their marketing budget to mobile ads. Sensing the opportunities in the evolving market, Alibaba Mobile Business group’s UCWeb launched innovative mobile marketing platform, UC Ads, last year. Alibaba UC Ads general manager Morden Chen, in an interaction with Indiantelevision.com spoke about business strategy and differentiated features of the platform.

    While UCWeb is an integral part of the Jack Ma led e-commerce giant’s strategy, it offers three core products including UC Browser, UC News, 9 Apps. Explaining how UC Ads is increasing its reach in India, Chen mentioned that it’s correlated with its overall product strategy.

    “Our product strategy is to serve another half of the global users who are just getting started for mobile internet. Users who just got their new Android phone, who just started mobile internet, can explore this interesting mobile world through our browser, a product with newsfeed and app store,” he said.  On the back of huge consumer base it has already created with existing products, UC Ads can help brands with the insights for targeted advertising.

    Talking about the clients, Chen said almost every e-commerce player and phone manufacturer are currently working with them including Amazon, Oppo, Vivo, Honor and Lava.

    After being in the Indian market for almost one year Chen says, “This market is rapidly growing. From my perspective, it will grow even faster due to new phone adaptations. It’s a booming market which I think will continue to boom in the next 10 years.” Interestingly, according to KMPG 2018 annual report, mobile advertisements are expected to grow from Rs 34.5 billion in FY17 to 304.5 billion in 2023 at a 43.8 per cent CAGR.

    “Before 2013-14, it was small. Around 2015, it’s getting more and more attention. Advertisers also want to invest, try and experiment in the sector. With more resources coming in it will get better. Mobile has many advantages that traditional players lack. Location-based, device based tracking is super easy compared to TVC. It has huge potential,” he added further.

    According to him, Indian online video space is full of long-form ads which are similar to TVC. On a different line, it is focusing more on short-form video created by individuals or small studios or individuals who want to have a studio and individual bloggers. It will mix official media content with articles from bloggers who have a deep understanding of something particular. “We want to let their articles also be viewed by users,” he added.

    While Chen was asked about competitors, he said everyone would mention those “two big guys” but he would not do so. According to him, the ever-interesting advertisement space is full of “feminies” (friends and enemies). If someone does better in one front, a competitor can do in another. According to him, working together will help everyone. The real challenges are fast adaptation, better infrastructure and 4G quality for seamless user experience.

    Talking about the Indian market, Chen also highlighted the necessity of good market research. Many internet startups came into India thinking it would be easy to monetise the product with the huge population. While getting users is not difficult, making the venture profitable is the real challenge.

    “We want to stay here, grow with the market and align with the local players,” Chen concluded. Currently, while UC Ads is present in India, Indonesia, Russia, the product may be available soon in Vietnam.

  • Paytm launches AI Cloud service with Alibaba

    Paytm launches AI Cloud service with Alibaba

    MUMBAI: Paytm parent One97 Communications has partnered with Alibaba to launch its artificial intelligence (AI) cloud computing platform Paytm AI Cloud for developers, start-ups, and enterprises.

    Paytm AI Cloud will offer a suite of business-centric applications including ready-to-use services that will allow businesses to automate their workflow, integrate payments, and provide messaging, customer engagement tools. The company said that its cloud will process and store all consumer data locally, in servers located only in India.

    Reports claim that the company has earmarked Rs 250 crore for this vertical. It will be interesting to see how the homegrown company’s foray into the cloud computing business pans out in the coming months. Paytm may gain an upper hand if it leverages the cloud computing business of its key investor Alibaba. The Chinese tech giant opened its first India data centre in Mumbai this January.

    The platform has also built various solutions that include ‘easy-to-access’ computing services, pattern recognition tech, pre-trained models, and predictive computation to businesses, the company said. 

    Paytm also announced that it will soon offer enterprise-messaging solution in partnership with DingTalk to facilitate conversations across email, chat, call or audio-video conference.

  • Alibaba, Tencent to acquire stake in WPP China

    Alibaba, Tencent to acquire stake in WPP China

    MUMBAI: Chinese multinational e-commerce company Alibaba, Tencent Holdings and China Media Capital Holdings (CMC) are in talks to buy a 20 per cent stake in advertising giant WPP’s Chinese unit.

    With this, Alibaba, Tencent and CMC would hold equal shareholding (6.66 per cent each) in the company.

    The deal is said to value the business between $2-2.5 billion. The deal was first initiated  by WPP former chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell but after his exit, Roberto Quarta went to China this month with co-chief operating officer Andrew Scott to continue talks.

    WPP is already in the midst of a leadership change with Sorrell’s exit while executive chairman Roberto Quarta said last month that the search for his replacement was well-advanced.

    The deal that may take several months to conclude, would see WPP pool its Chinese agency operations into a new holding company and retain majority ownership and control, said a report by Sky News.

    However, the joint ownership in WPP China could come as a surprise given the competitive tension between Alibaba and Tencent. 

    Additionally, Alibaba has also agreed to pay $2.23 billion for a roughly 10 per cent stake in digital advertising company Focus Media that  operates screens in elevators and subways in China. Alibaba is aggressively looking at expansion in advertising and media sectors.

  • Mukesh Ambani pips Jack Ma to be Asia’s richest

    Mukesh Ambani pips Jack Ma to be Asia’s richest

    MUMBAI: Indian business tycoon Mukesh Ambani overtook Alibaba group founder Jack Ma on Friday to become richest person in Asia. As Reliance Industry Ltd (RIL) share rose 1.6 per cent, the total wealth of Ambani hit $44.3 billion.

    Chinese e-commerce giant Ma’s wealth stood at $44 billion at close of trade on Thursday in the US, where the company is listed.

    This year Ambani has added another $4 billion to his existing emperor. RIL has reaped huge benefit from its telecom venture Jio along with doubling petrochemicals capacity too. Moreover, he unveiled plans to leverage his 215 million telecom subscribers to expand his e-commerce offerings earlier this month.

    He said Reliance saw its “biggest growth opportunity in creating a hybrid, online-to-offline new commerce platform,” involving the group’s retail and telecom business.

    “We need to broaden our horizon of expectation with Reliance,” a Mumbai-based analyst at Antique Stock Broking Nitin Tiwari said. “They are in for something really transformational,” he added.

    On the other hand, Alibaba Goup’s Ma has reportedly lost $1.4 billion in 2018.

  • Alibaba’s India OTT may launch in three months

    Alibaba’s India OTT may launch in three months

    MUMBAI: According to a report by The Ken, Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has announced plans to launch an over-the-top (OTT) video service in India over the next three months. The service will be introduced in partnership with its Indian investee company Paytm and mobile Internet subsidiary UCWeb, the report said.

    However, in a statement made to Indian Television Dot Com, an Alibaba Group spokesperson said: “India is key in our globalization strategy and we are very committed to growing our existing businesses in this market in the long term. As a policy we do not comment on market speculation.”

    “It’s an obligatory play. The global player does it so we have no option but to follow it,” the report quoted a senior Paytm official as saying.

    Over the last several months, Jack Ma-led Alibaba has reportedly been scouring the Indian market looking for quality content creators and production houses in Mumbai.

    The ecommerce behemoth is also reportedly in the process of hiring a strategic alliance head in Gurugram as well as a strategic alliance head for Video in either Mumbai or Gurugram.

    Both of these positions would fall under the Alibaba-owned UCWeb’s business, sources have revealed. It is, however, believed that the move will be spearheaded locally by Damon Xi, head of UCWeb India and Indonesia.

    Currently, Alibaba has two contest-based products in India – mobile browser UCWeb and We-Media, which together boast over 200 Mn users. Launched in March 2017 with an initial investment of Rs 5 crore ($782000), We-Media is a UCWeb-operated platform wherein users can post their own content in the form of articles, photos and videos.

    Alibaba currently has a formidable presence in the Chinese OTT video market through Youku Tudou, which it acquired in 2015. Youku and Tudou are, essentially, two free video sites like YouTube that were merged in 2012.

    Also Read:

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    Aastha TV to launch OTT, VOD service