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Tag: Anurag Gupta

  • SVG Media partners BirdEye to launch customer experience platform in India

    SVG Media partners BirdEye to launch customer experience platform in India

    MUMBAI: SVG Media, a digital marketing platform from Dentsu Aegis Network Company, has announced a strategic partnership with US-based BirdEye in India. It will help increase BirdEye’s global footprint as the leading customer experience and business reputation platform.

    BirdEye gives businesses the ability to hardwire every business decision around the customer and scale revenue growth. BirdEye’s all-in-one platform includes review monitoring, review generation, review marketing, customer surveys, social listening, social publishing, social engagement, customer support ticketing, listings, webchat, business insights and competitive benchmarking. SVG Media will assign a workforce of digital experts across multiple offices in India and will support BirdEye in working with leading brands all over the country.

    BirdEye co-founder and CEO Naveen Gupta said, “We are incredibly excited about this partnership. SVG brings an unparalleled understanding and execution in the Indian market. This is the reason why the majority of the world’s leading companies cherry-pick SVG as their digital partner.”

    SVG Media CEO Anurag Gupta said, “The marketing tangent in India is fast evolving and there is a growing need for effective marketing technologies. The BirdEye product suite serves a holistic and focused approach towards revenue contribution across their implementations. SVG would bring its strategic market understanding and sales expertise to grow the business presence in India. We are very excited to be partnering with BirdEye and are looking forward to improving customer experiences in India.”

    SVG Media serves as a single platform for all the digital media needs of businesses such as DGM, Seventynine, Komli and SVG Mobile, from performance marketing, mobile, online advertising, social media, data targeting to rich media and has presences in India, South East Asia and the Middle East.

    Launched in early 2012, BirdEye now serves over 50,000 business from small and medium-sized businesses to Fortune 500 companies. The partnership with SVG Media will further strengthen BirdEye’s presence in the Indian market at a time when the company is more than ever advancing its products and services for brands looking to manage their customer experience and online reputation all in one place.

  • Sohail Khan appointed Columbus India’s business head – West

    Sohail Khan appointed Columbus India’s business head – West

    MUMBAI: Columbus India, the digital agency of Dentsu Aegis Network, has appointed Sohail Khan Qadri as business head – West. 

    Khan joins the agency to lead Columbus India’s digital agency on record (AOR) business in western India. He will report to Nitin Sabharwal, chief business officer, Columbus India.

    Khan has 18 years of experience in digital communication, digital AOR, content marketing solutions, social media optimisation and marketing, search engine marketing, digital media planning and buying, mobile media, and technology and start-ups. 

    Khan has worked with vMobo Mobile, DGM India, R K Swamy BBDO, Tribal DDB India, Lintas and Interactive Realities. He has worked across businesses into telecom, consumer electronics, retail, auto, FMCG, BFSI, sports, healthcare, public policy and governance. His last stint was at iRealities where he was appointed as business director. 

    In his current role, Khan will focus on building the digital AOR business for Columbus India. As business head for western India, he will be actively involved in crafting a roadmap for the growth of the digital AOR business across key categories such as BFSI, e-commerce, brand commerce, education and FMCG.

    Commenting on his assignment, Khan said, “The digital consumer is evolving, and so are the channels to reach them online. Traditional AOR business has been more focused on being campaign driven with digital coming at the far end of the planning process, largely implementing the strategies driven by a much larger mainline agenda. We are seeing that often the digital strategy lacks cohesion between key elements such as business objective, communication objective, campaign objective, channels of execution, consumer experience, content, technology and brand performance. Columbus is in a unique position to stitch all these pieces together to offer brands a digital AOR that blends the elements of communication, content, creative, media, social, search, performance and finally sales through a cohesively designed and executed digital strategy”

    Sabharwal added, “We have set up Columbus to continuously adapt and adopt the latest digital trends and practices and give a holistic and seamless solution to our clients. With Sohail joining us, we are sure of pushing the envelope even further with much deeper insights and solutions to deliver against the client’s objectives.”

  • SVG Columbus debuts with big wins at IAMAI’s 8th India Digital Awards

    SVG Columbus debuts with big wins at IAMAI’s 8th India Digital Awards

    MUMBAI: SVG Columbus has been honoured with 2 Golds and 1 Silver by the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) on its debut. For the record, SVG Media was acquired by Dentsu Aegis Network in April 2017. Post the acquisition, SVG Media launched Columbus – an agency focused on Data Driven Digital Marketing.

    The India Digital Awards, now in its 8th edition, was held at The Lalit Hotel in New Delhi on January 18. What is interesting to note here is that these awards came within less than a year of launch of the agency.

    Details of the winning campaigns are as follows:

    1. Best Messaging Campaign (Gold) – Measles & Rubella awareness campaign by SVG Columbus

    2. Best Email Marketing Campaign (Gold) – Max Life Insurance by SVG Columbus

    3. Best Digital Integrated Campaign (Silver) – Measles & Rubella awareness campaign by SVG Columbus

    Speaking on the achievement, SVG Media CEO, Anurag Gupta says, “It gives us great satisfaction to win 3 metals at the IAMAI 8th India Digital Awards, and that too even before completing our first year! This happened due to the hard work and teamwork displayed by the SVG Columbus teams and our clients.”

    Nitin Sabharwal, chief business officer, SVG Columbus says, “Our problem solving approach worked for us here. We believe in developing true partnerships with our clients and make their problems our own to solve.”

  • Premier Badminton League assigns digital mandate to Columbus India

    Premier Badminton League assigns digital mandate to Columbus India

    MUMBAI: Premier Badminton League (PBL) has assigned its digital mandate to Columbus India, the digital agency from Dentsu Aegis Network.

    Managed by Sportzlive, it is India’s highest prize money tournament in the world of badminton leagues. The league goes live this season from 23 December 2017 till 14 Jan 2018.

    Sportzlive founder Prasad Mangipudi says, “This relationship will help Sportzlive & PBL to get media engagement services from Columbus’ unique ‘Media Engagement Framework’, enabling the event to reach millions of digital audiences in India & abroad.”

    Sportzlive managing director Atul Pande adds, “Digital is going to be a focus area of our marketing spends as our viewers are majorly online enabling us to build a larger sporting community across all sporting events managed by SportzLive.”

    Columbus India CEO Anurag Gupta mentions, “Columbus’ unique digital media services framework will allow real-time reporting on not just engagement but also on the buzz to help Sportzlive communicate with its audience in real time, this will be our second sports media engagement account after successfully working with Sportzlive for #CueSlam earlier this year.”

  • Outbrain appoints SVG Media as sales partner

    MUMBAI: Outbrain, the leading global discovery platform, has announced that it has entered into a sales partnership in India with SVG Media- India’s largest Digital Media Company, recently acquired by Dentsu Aegis Network.

    SVG Media, soon to be known as SVG Columbus, has been appointed as the official Sales Partner in India for Outbrain. It will help the company to continue to grow its presence and strengthen its foundation in India, allowing Outbrain to further penetrate the market.

    SVG Media will allocate a workforce of over 10 digital experts across offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and will support Outbrain in working with brands all over the country. Since its launch in early 2014, Outbrain has experienced massive growth in India, and the partnership will further strengthen its presence in the market at a time when the company is more than ever advancing its product and services to provide something truly valuable for its clients.

    “Since entering the market in 2014, India has proven to be a market with huge potential for Outbrain and we’ve observed tremendous growth over the past few years,” said Outbrain HoD – APAC Chris Mockford.

    Outbrain sales director for India Neeraj Singhal commented: “Outbrain continues to be the medium of choice for brands across all industry sectors that wish to reach relevant audiences in India. Through this partnership with SVG Media we will be able to serve our clients, as well as better deploy our technology, tools, proprietary analytics and insight capabilities.”

    Komli SVP Akshay Mathur said, “SVG brings unparalleled understanding of the Indian market and execution capabilities. This is the reason why majority of the world’s leading companies are choosing us for setting up their India business. We are delighted to partner with Outbrain and look forward to supporting them in building their India business.”

    SVG Media CEO Anurag Gupta commented, “We’re incredibly excited about the potential for this new partnership. Outbrain’s superb reputation is entirely in-sync with the reputation that SVG Media has worked so hard to create in India.” He added: “SVG Media works with almost all the leading brands in India and we look forward to bringing them on Outbrain’s unique discovery solution”.

    Over the last six years, SVG Media has been the India market entry partner for the leading Internet brands, including Facebook, Twitter, OLX, LinkedIn, Zynga and others. These companies have chosen SVG Media because of its unmatched understanding of India’s emerging digital advertising market. The company has also contributed aggregate revenues of $2 billion to its international partners.

    Outbrain continues to advance Discovery in Asia and has spent the past five years on the ground educating the market and building the largest network of premium sites for discovery. The continued expansion of the company significantly increases the marketer’s ability to build audiences and drive discovery for their brands.

    Outbrain’s growing reach combines local premium publications, such as the Indian Express, The Hindu, Moneycontrol, Business Standard and ESPNcricinfo, in addition to global sites like CNN, ESPN, Time Inc. and BBC. Worldwide, it serves over 250 billion recommendations per month and reaches in the region of a billion users every month across the globe.

  • Dentsu acquires SVG Media, launches Columbus

    MUMBAI: Dentsu Aegis Network has announced the acquisition of SVG Media Private Limited, one of the largest independent digital agencies in India. SVG Media will join the network’s Asia Pacific digital marketing agency Columbus and will become SVG Columbus. Dentsu Aegis Network is currently Google’s largest search partner in India, and the addition of SVG Media will further strengthen the Group’s leading search position in the market. This acquisition will also support Columbus’ expansion in Asia Pacific – now in nine markets across the region.

    SVG Media includes the flagship brands DGM, Komli and Seventynine. Founded in 2006, SVG Media comprises of over 280 specialists across four major Indian cities Gurgaon, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore. It offers diverse digital media competencies including online performance marketing, mobile app distribution, representations, social and web services through its flagship brands. The group has one of the largest client bases in the Indian digital media sector with over 700 monthly active advertiser campaigns locally, as well as international clients in Dubai, Indonesia and China.

    SVG Columbus CEO & DGM Anurag Gupta will report to Dentsu Aegis Network South Asia chairman and CEO Ashish Bhasin.

    Gupta, SVG Media Mobile & Seventynine CEO Chirag Shah, SVG Media Mobile & Seventynine COO Deven Dharamdasani, Komli business head Akshay Mathur, and finance controller Ashwani Mehta will join the SVG Columbus managing board, which will be chaired by Dentsu Aegis Network – Performance CEO Vivek Bhargava. Smile Group co-founders Harish Bahl and Manish Vij will continue to focus on investments through the Smile Group and will no longer act as directors of SVG Media. It has also been agreed that the Smile Group will retain the Tyroo Techlabs business.

    Bhasin said: “India is a significant market with rapid growth potential in its mobile and performance marketing business, and Dentsu Aegis Network India has a strong track record in the search and performance space to deliver this. Given its capabilities in data led search, performance marketing and mobile, SVG Columbus is ideally positioned to capture the fragmented long tail publisher market in India using technology and data. As a Group we have leading position in digital in India, particularly in search and performance and this gives us a clear leadership position in this area. We will now have over 1,300 digital professionals, accounting for over 35% of our revenues, well ahead of our competitors.”

    Gupta said: “We started out as a digital media group more than a decade ago, and for us to join forces with a clear market leader in digital, that is Dentsu Aegis Network, makes perfect sense. Their priority in placing digital at the forefront of their strategy and goals align perfectly with ours. We will continue to scale our offering in performance marketing and serving clients through the network and other agency networks. We are assured of their strong growth momentum, which will enable us to further enhance our scale as a business operationally and geographically. Their unique one P&L model also allows us to be part of that shared vision towards a digital world which will provide us with access to the latest industry technology and talent to deliver the best solutions for our clients.”