Tag: Ankit Jain

  • Clean sweep for style as Specta and Gauri Khan surface a tough truth

    Clean sweep for style as Specta and Gauri Khan surface a tough truth

     MUMBAI: “The designer in me prefers beauty; the mother in me prefers safety.” With one evocative line, Gauri Khan slices straight into the modern Indian homeowner’s dilemma and Specta, the engineered quartz brand, serves it up with a sparkling side of design and conscience. Specta’s latest campaign, fronted by the celebrated interior designer and entrepreneur, poses a deceptively simple question: are your kitchen countertops just pretty to look at, or are they also safe enough to eat off? In an age when style and sanitation are often seen as strange bedfellows, Specta’s quartz surfaces promise to bridge that gap with panache.

    In the campaign film, Khan’s voiceover articulates the dual identities of many homeowners aesthetes and caregivers alike and challenges the idea that one must choose between elegance and everyday hygiene. Specta, with its NSF-certified, non-porous, germ- and toxin-free surfaces, makes a compelling case for having it both ways.

    “This campaign is about stirring the pot,” said Specta Quartz Surfaces founder Ankit Jain. “We use kitchen surfaces more than we realise and more roughly than we’d like to admit. Yet, the conversation around what’s safe to touch our food, and our families, is largely silent. We wanted to change that.”

    Designed with Indian kitchens in mind from oil splatters to hot pots and the occasional atta massacre, Specta’s engineered quartz promises durability without compromising on design. The surfaces have been tailored for both performance and polish, making them fit for fast-paced homes and fastidious designers alike.

    The campaign also follows Specta’s continued collaboration with Gauri Khan, including the ‘Gauri Picks’ collection that debuted at the AD Design Show 2024. It reaffirms the brand’s ambition to disrupt the surface segment one hygienic, high-fashion countertop at a time.

    So, the next time someone compliments your chic kitchen the only question worth asking might just be: “But can you eat off it?”

  • Enjoy Alt Balaji entertainment as you ride in Ola

    MUMBAI: Alt Balaji and Ola’s connected car platform for ridesharing Ola Play have joined hands to provide entertainment on the go.

    Through this collaboration, a preview of Alt Balaji’s original and exclusive shows will be available to Ola Play customers across the country. The users will be able to access a vast collection of original shows produced and curated by Alt Balaji through an immersive and personalized experience which customers can seamlessly control through their smartphones as well as a device mounted at the back of the seat.

    Present in cities such as Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad, Ola Play presents Alt Balaji with the opportunity to engage with hundreds and thousands of Ola customers. Alt Balaji aims to create 250+ hrs of original content this year for its viewers all over the world.

    Alt Balaji CEO Nachiket Pantvaidya said, “Oia is the only ridesharing app in India that links mobility to an unparalleled in-cab experience, providing a great platform for content creators like us with a unique opportunity to reach out to a wide customer base. With an average ride time of 45 minutes or more, travellers are usually deprived of options. But through Ola’s unique connected experience for travellers, Ola Play users can now access an assortment of Alt Balaji’s shows from multiple genres, and beat traffic woes. All new shows will be available on Play, and for more content, users can download the Alt Balaji app through Ola’s free in-cab Wi-Fi connectivity. We look forward to our continued association with Ola Play to create the best possible experience for Ola customers.”

    Ola Play Head and senior director Ankit Jain said, “Content partnerships such as Alt Balaji play a huge role in enhancing the unique customer experience that 0/a Play as a pioneering innovation has to offer. The strategic tie-up aims to provide fresh and exclusive content to our customers who can control the entire experience and engage with the content. With partnerships such as these, Ola is well on its way to transform the consumer’s ride experience, building an experience that is intelligent, contextual, and unique.”

    Alt Balaji was launched on 16 April 2017 with five original shows and the app will unveil shows every fortnight for its viewers to binge watch. The platform recently launched The Test Case’ directed by Nagesh Kukunoor starring Nimrat Kaur as the first female officer in a combat role. The content has been created by some of the best talent in the Indian entertainment industry, including critically acclaimed directors and actors.

    The illustrious list of artistes also comprises Juhi Chawla,Rajkumar Rao, Hansal Mehta,Sakshi Tanwar,Ram Kapoor, Atul Kulkarni, Sameer Soni, Yudhishtar Urs, Dipannita Sharma Atwal, and many more. Alt Balaji now has the widest payment options amongst SVOD on services in India.

  • Eros Now plays on Ola Play now

    MUMBAI: Eros Now, one of the fastest growing over-the-top (OTT) Indian entertainment platforms owned by Eros International Plc, has announced a strategic integration deal with India’s leading mobile app for transportation, Ola’s connected car platform for ridesharing, Ola Play. This strategic revenue-sharing partnership through Eros Now subscriptions will enable an immersive and personalized experience which customers can seamlessly control through their smartphones as well as a device mounted at the back of the seat.

    Powered by proprietary in-car and cloud technologies from Ola, Ola Play brings advanced car controls, choice of personalized content and a fully-connected interactive experience for its customers. Eros Now offers the widest library of films, music, premium television, and regional content that has the potential to enhance the experience for many Ola customers.

    Ola commuters will now have easy access to a vast array of unlimited entertainment options through Eros Now on Ola Play. Content will be customized depending on customer preferences and ride information like time and destination to provide the perfect connected in-car experience. The association particularly adds value to the superior experience proposition of Ola Rental and Ola Outstations categories that are widely used by customers. Long, traffic-filled journeys are now going to be easier rides with Eros Now’s broad selection of entertainment choices on display. The offering is currently available in four cities: Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Hyderabad.

    Commenting on the integration, Eros Digital CEO Rishika Lulla Singh said, “Connected cars are a reality now in India with Ola Play. We are excited to join hands with Ola as our vision remains to provide easy access to premium experience on-the-go. This strategic integration enables increased user engagement and will help us increase our reach to millions of Ola customers.”

    Speaking on the development, Ola Play sr. director Ankit Jain said, “At Ola, we are tirelessly working towards enhancing customer experience, Ola Play is a strong step in that direction. In line with such efforts, our association with Eros Now is sure to offer our discerning customers an unparalleled entertainment experience. A boon for our Outstation customers who spend hours at a stretch in the cab, they now have an even stronger reason to choose Play on our platform. With partnerships such as these, Ola is well on its way to transform the consumer’s ride experience, giving them the power to control their time spent inside the car, and building an experience that is intelligent, contextual, and unique.”

    With this association, Ola Play customers will have access to a vast and diverse range of popular movies on Eros Now. Currently, the offering is available in four cities in the country: Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Hyderabad.

  • Pocket Aces partners Ola & Play

    MUMBAI: Pocket Aces, one of the country’s leading digital entertainment companies running channels FilterCopy, Dice Media and Gobble, has partnered with Ola, India’s most popular mobile app for transportation, to provide a wide range of digital content to Ola’s connected ridesharing platform, Ola Play.

    The premium content from Pocket Aces will include short videos from their flagship channel FilterCopy, hugely popular web series Little Things and Not Fit from Dice Media, and food videos from Gobble. Not Fit was also the first web series to play on television – it did three successful runs on NDTV Prime earlier this year.

    Pocket Aces co-founder Aditi Shrivastava said, “Our goal is to give our content and our brand partners as much reach as possible, and are in conversations with several global OTT players and television channels to syndicate our content. ”

    Ola Play sr. director & head Ankit Jain said, “The possibilities that Play offers allows us to discover and aggregate content as music, web series, discover apps and much more to be made available to customers at the push of a button. We are extremely excited to partner with Pocket Aces to enable Ola Play users’ access to high quality content.”

  • Askme to roll out hyper-local online grocery across 27 Indian cities

    Askme to roll out hyper-local online grocery across 27 Indian cities

    MUMBAI: Online SMB marketplace Askme is planning to launch its online grocery platform top 27 cities in India in the next four to six months. The company has kick-started this initiative with Delhi NCR.

     

    With a promise that grocery is available below MRP and delivered at the doorstep, the team has brought together offline merchants to list their SKUs online.

     

    Askme group CMO & head digital strategy Manav Sethi said, “Every feature, platform and strategic relationship that Askme enters into is driven by singular motivation of adding business value to offline merchants by leveraging online platforms. The platform Bestatlowest.com is a hyper-local model that enables offline grocery retailers in neighbourhoods to come online for incremental magnetisation and building consumer loyalty. Leveraging hyperlocal model of sourcing and zero costs on inventory or warehousing brings significant advantage of pricing and portfolio. This model is also extremely flexible and rapidly scalable in adding more merchants and SKU categories as demand grows both nationally and locally. Delhi NCR now boasts of 30 hyper-local hubs with 25000+ SKUs. Askme intends to leverage its brand and infrastructure to cross sell and upsell grocery online to all its existing and potential consumers.”

     

    India is the sixth largest grocery market in the world and retail consultancy Technopak estimates that online grocery market is growing at the rate of 25-30 per cent annually in major cities of India. According to Research firm IGD predictions, India’s online grocery market, which is estimated to be less than $100 million at present, is expected to cross $25 billion by 2020 and by 2016, the Indian grocery market would overtake Japan to become the third largest market worldwide.

     

    Teams lead by Ankit Jain and Amit Nigam, founders of Bestatlowest.com, scaled this business to Delhi NCR within 60 days of working with the Askme team.

     

    Jain said, “Offline merchants were brought on board to list their SKUs and Askme team works with these merchants very closely whenever an order is executed. Functional teams and Askme brand gave us that huge fillip in covering this journey in 60 days which otherwise would have taken many more months.”