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Tag: co-founder

  • Akasa Air’s Belson Coutinho expresses gratitude for support

    Akasa Air’s Belson Coutinho expresses gratitude for support

    MUMBAI: Belson Coutinho, the newly-elevated (earlier this month) co-founder & chief operating officer (COO) at Akasa Air, has expressed his heartfelt gratitude for the overwhelming support and wishes he has received on his new role. In a statement, Coutinho said he was “deeply touched” by the kindness and generosity of everyone who has reached out to him.

    Coutinho, who brings over 24 years of experience in the aviation industry, is an award-winning and entrepreneurial-minded senior management professional with expertise in marketing, eCommerce, and digital transformation. He has a proven track record of setting up and growing business units across various functions, including marketing, digital, social media, eCommerce, and customer service.

    As COO at Akasa Air, Coutinho is expected to leverage his exceptional leadership skills and innovative approach to drive growth and success for the airline. Prior to his advancement as COO, Coutinho was co-founder & chief marketing & experience officer.

    He has previously held senior roles at renowned companies such as Jet Airways and VFS Global, where he pioneered various industry-first initiatives in eCommerce, social media, digital, loyalty, and consumer experience.

    Coutinho’s appointment as COO at Akasa Air marks a new chapter in his career, and he is “incredibly grateful” for the opportunity to be part of the team and contribute to the airline’s success. He thanked everyone for their unwavering support, saying it means more than he can express.

    With his extensive experience and expertise, Coutinho is poised to make a significant impact at Akasa Air. His ability to see the “bigger picture” and his strong operational, strategic, and leadership skills make him an ideal fit for the role. As a team player with excellent communication skills, Coutinho is well-equipped to work under pressure in a fast-paced environment and drive collaboration with partners, consumers, and colleagues alike.

    As Akasa Air continues to grow and expand its operations, Coutinho’s appointment as COO is seen as a significant boost to the airline’s leadership team. With his innovative approach and exceptional leadership skills, he is expected to play a key role in shaping the airline’s future and driving its success.

  • Richard Welsh Elected President of SMPTE

    Richard Welsh Elected President of SMPTE

    MUMBAI: The Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers (SMPTE) earlier this week  announced the election of Richard Welsh as its new president, taking office on 1 January 2025. Welsh, who previously served as SMPTE’s executive vice president, will lead the organisation for a two-year term, concluding on 31 December  2026.

    “I am honored to have been elected SMPTE president and look forward to collaborating with the SMPTE community globally to advance our industry,” Welsh stated. He highlighted  that for over a century, SMPTE’s mission has been to bring moving images to audiences worldwide. Given the proliferation of video devices and on-demand content, Welsh believes the Society’s commitment to ensuring high-quality media experiences is more crucial than ever.

    As the current senior vice president of innovation at Deluxe, Welsh brings over a decade of experience on the SMPTE board, including roles as vice president of education and governor for EMEA and central/south America. He is also a board member of IBC and co-founder of Volustor, a volumetric asset management company.

    Welsh began his illustrious career at Dolby Laboratories, ultimately rising to director of digital cinema services. He also led operations for Technicolor’s digital cinema and localisation services and currently serves as an associate lecturer at Southampton Solent University while co-founding Sundog Media Toolkit

    SMPTE executive director Sally-Ann D’Amato praised Welsh as an “innovative thinker with bold plans for the future.” 

    She highlighted his commitment to expanding the organisation’s reach to diverse audiences and fostering early-career professionals, expressing eagerness to collaborate on turning his vision into reality.

  • SG Analytics appoints Rob Mitchell as its new advisory board member

    SG Analytics appoints Rob Mitchell as its new advisory board member

    Mumbai: SG Analytics, a leading global Insights and analytics company, has announced the addition of Rob Mitchell to its advisory board. Mitchell, an industry veteran and accomplished professional with over 25 years of experience is the co-founder & CEO of FT Longitude, a London specialist thought leadership agency that advises global B2B brands.

    “I am excited to welcome Rob as his rich experience will bolster our efforts to provide more value to our customers and strengthen our relationships,” said SG Analytics CEO Sid Banerjee.

    “Our board of advisors are committed to enabling our growth plans and championing our vision globally, and with Rob on the team, I visualize us further strengthened to achieve our business goals including our resolve to go public in 2025,” he added.

    As the co-founder and CEO of FT Longitude, Mitchell secured investment for Longitude from the Financial Times Group in 2018, and in 2022 Longitude became a fully owned subsidiary of the FT Group. Rob has led many consulting engagements and projects with global multinational companies, and he also enjoys writing and speaking on content strategy, thought leadership, and maximizing the return on marketing investments.

    An alum of Oxford University, prior to co-founding Longitude, Mitchell worked as a senior editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit, and before that, he edited sponsored reports for the Financial Times, including the Mastering Management series.

    “Data and analytics are now a critical asset for companies worldwide and SG Analytics is in a strong position to help organisations use those assets to make better decisions and drive long-term sustainable growth at a time of ongoing economic and geopolitical change,” said Mitchell.

    He further said, “I am looking forward to joining SG Analytics at a pivotal moment in its growth and in bringing my expertise in brand marketing, content and international business expansion to help accelerate the company’s impressive growth around the world.”

  • Zomato’s Mohit Gupta bids adieu

    Zomato’s Mohit Gupta bids adieu

    Mumbai: In a sundry of exits at Zomato, Mohit Gupta has put in his papers as co-founder.  He had been with the food delivery company for about four and a half years.

    Gupta’s departure marks the third high-profile departure from Zomato. Earlier this week, the food delivery major’s head of new businesses and former food delivery chief Rahul Ganjoo, had put in his papers. Also, Siddharth Jhawar, who held the position of vice president of global growth and head of the Intercity Legends service at Zomato, called it a day.

    Gupta joined Zomato in 2018 as the head of food delivery. He was subsequently elevated to co-founder in 2021 to oversee new businesses when Ganjoo was made the CEO of food delivery. Before joining the food delivery major, Gupta was the chief operating officer of travel portal Makemytrip. He has also worked at PepsiCo during his career.

    Kamayani Sadhwani, a director at Zomato-owned quick commerce company Blinkit, has taken over from Jhawar as the head of the Intercity Legends service. Prior to taking on the role at Blinkit earlier this year, Sadhwani has also worked at Coca-Cola India, Bain, Accenture, and McKinsey.

  • Sociowash onboards Chirag Sangai as business head – Mumbai

    Sociowash onboards Chirag Sangai as business head – Mumbai

    Mumbai: Creative digital agency, Sociowash has announced the appointment of Chirag Sangai as its business head in Mumbai.

    In his newly appointed role, Sangai will be managing a growing team of approximately 100 members while overseeing all core operations of the office located in Mumbai. He will report directly to the co-founders, Pranav Agarwal and Raghav Bagai.

    With over a decade of experience in the advertising industry, Sangai previously worked as the group director of Gozoop Group, where he undertook tasks for multiple well-known brands such as BookMyShow, Taj Hotels, Dell, and was also an integral part of launching the global coffee giant Tim Hortons in India. He has also held leadership positions at agencies like White Rivers Media and Blink Digital.

    Sociowash co-founder Raghav Bagai said, “We are glad to welcome Sangai, and we are excited about the progress this union will bring. To reach the next stage of growth, we have to expand our offerings and retain relationships with existing clients. We are optimistic that Chirag can accelerate growth, create award-winning campaigns while also focussing on boosting optimum work-life balance.”

    Sociowash co-founder Pranav Agarwal added, “Sangai has a wealth of experience in marketing and advertising. With a professional background as diverse as his, he will undoubtedly add value to the organization and its partners. We look forward to seeing how he performs and wish him all the best as he prepares for this feat.”

    Sangai lives by a set of morals and ethics, he believes in the ‘5Rs’ of effective account management: Revenue, Relationship, Resources, Research, and Retention. He would be focusing on business, culture, and awards at Sociowash. Using this, he will carry out successful business strategies that have proven effective in the past years as well.

    While talking about his latest stint Sangai commented, “I am grateful for the opportunity given to me, and I am eager to start working at Sociowash. I have admired its work and partners for a long time now, and they have always encouraged the highest quality of work and culture.”

    He further added, “As the new business head, I will try to incorporate my philosophy of ‘Collaborate, Integrate, and Activate’ into Sociowash’s ever-growing ecosystem that they have developed and maintained for years.”

  • ConsCent.ai unveils its intelligent e-reader solution for publishers

    ConsCent.ai unveils its intelligent e-reader solution for publishers

    Mumbai: ConsCent.ai has introduced an e-reader solution. It is a future system that combines intelligence, engagement, retention and payments, enabling publishers to increase their subscription business by utilising their e-papers and e-magazines.

     ConsCent’s e-reader solution aims to restore publishers’ control over their data, and enable them to improve subscription conversions and lifetime value of users using ConsCent’s suite of paywalling, recommendation and engagement suite, bridging the innovation gap in e-publishing services currently used for publishing e-papers.

    The product is launched with a goal to reduce cost and increase productivity for publishers by providing them with a full stack solution for all their content offerings in which data is unified, visualisation is simplified, and decision making is faster.

    In India, at present e-papers account for about 80 per cent of all digital subscriptions sold, which makes it vital for the digital reader revenue strategy. With these figures, the tool is quite relevant for the upcoming times.

     The tool reduces the time required to publish, organise, and maintain e-papers and e-magazines by uploading PDF pages with a single click. It also controls sharing and minimises leaks. It lets the user segment readers, retarget them and connect with them. Other key features of this solution include using information derived from a centralised dashboard and diversifying revenue streams, select, customising and implementing various paywalls (hybrid, dynamic). The tool ensures that users have a pleasurable experience. 

    For an understanding, 50+ news publishers and OTT platforms in India use ConsCent to maximise user revenue. India Today Group (India Today, Cosmopolitan, and Business Today), Outlook India Group (Outlook India and Outlook Business), MidDay, Jagran News Media, Amar Ujala, Udayavani, Amar Chitra Katha, EPIC On, Tinkle Comics, and are amongst some of the company’s key partners.

    ConsCent has surpassed seven lakh users who can access premium content on ConsCent’s partners without creating multiple logins and can unlock premium content with a single click. The firm’s partners have not only increased their paying user base 10X in a year, but have also assisted publishers in making their premium content more discoverable through recommendations, engaging with users through audience segmentation-based targeting, and even retaining them through a host of marketing tools – all through one single dashboard.

    ConsCent co-founder and CEO Sunny Sen shared, “Newspapers are the most valuable and editorially rich content produced by publishers. However, if it is limited to print, it loses the ability to develop, maximise brand recognition and truly monetise its content. As readers and advertisers rapidly migrate online and to mobile devices, publishers have little choice, but to adapt.”

    However, a digital presence is not sufficient. A publisher must be able to effectively monetise their valuable editorial content, which is essentially a result of how well they can understand their audience and use the information about their preferences, reading habits, reading behaviour, propensity to pay, etc. to deliver them with a personalised experience.

     “The option to consume anything at any time with the choice of what time of day you would like to consume your content has made capturing user data an essential requirement for publishers in the internet age. Existing E-publishing software gives publishers little to no control over user behaviour understanding, resulting in a significant loss of user comprehension,” he concluded.

  • Bizongo ropes in Tushar Kamat as Chief Business Officer

    Bizongo ropes in Tushar Kamat as Chief Business Officer

    Mumbai: Bizongo, India’s leading supply chain automation platform, has announced the appointment of former Accenture managing director & Airtel business CEO Tushar Kamat as chief business officer. In his new role, Kamat will be responsible for business strategies, partnerships, marketing, monetization, growth and global expansion at Bizongo.

    Kamat’s appointment comes at a critical juncture as Bizongo looks at entering the unicorn club in early 2023. An accomplished veteran across technology domains, he has more than 25 years of experience in sales leadership, scaling business growth, and enabling business transformation by developing go-to-market strategies for generating revenue.

    Kamat has been associated with leading technology organizations including SAP, Accenture, Airtel, and TCS. In his most recent role as field operating unit head for the India business at Automation Anywhere, he drove hyper-scale business growth by 250 per cent during the covid era.

    Bizongo chief operating officer Aniket Deb said, “Kamat joins us at a very exciting juncture in our growth journey. We are confident that his strategic outlook and growth mindset will help us achieve profitable business growth and create value for our customers & vendors. His ability to deliver large-scale impact will enable us to scale our vision faster and digitally transform vendor management and the entire supply chain for MSMEs.”

    Commenting on his appointment, Kamat said, “I am very excited to join Bizongo during this hyper-growth phase. I am confident to leverage my diverse experience to transform and grow Bizongo’s business in India and globally.”

    Kamat is also co-founder & non-executive partner of Nyaasah Care LLP, a social start-up aimed at providing care with empathy for senior citizens leading a lonely life in India.

  • CommsCredible elevates Priyanka Wadhwa & Neena Biswal as co-founders

    CommsCredible elevates Priyanka Wadhwa & Neena Biswal as co-founders

    Mumbai: On its 2nd anniversary, India-headquartered PR tech start-up, CommsCredible has announced the addition of two women co-founders in its leadership team. The bootstrapped start-up has elevated Priyanka Wadhwa, from head of strategy & operations, to co-founder and chief strategy officer and Neena Biswal, from head of South office, to co-founder & director.

    Born during the covid pandemic, the company has won numerous prestigious awards in a very short span of time, which include ETBrandEquity’s ‘Emerging Agency of the Year’, Agency Reporter’s ‘Fastest Growing Agency of the Year’, and Inskpell Media’s ‘Best Consulting Start-up of the Year’, apart from winning many other for its partner clients at forums such a Mint-TechCircle, Campaign India, IDC etc.

    Commenting on her elevation, Wadhwa said, “The collective vision and future of CommsCredible is very exciting to me. The opportunities are endless when it comes to the play of technology in PR, as well as its business and community impact. I look forward to taking our business strategy to the next level as we head towards a global scale up in the next phase.”

    Added Biswal, “I am happy to be part of this growth journey of CommsCredible. Since inception, I have been privy to how we have grown incredibly through word of mouth and good storytelling, without having to focus on business development. It’s a very interesting time for us as a company, as we add technology to grow asset-lite, expand our client portfolio, and strengthen our offerings to become a preferred partner for brands from diverse industries.”

    In her previous role, Wadhwa was heading the company’s business strategy and operations, while Biswal’s prior role included responsibilities such as strengthening media relations and taking an integrated communications approach for partner brands.   

    Talking about CommsCredible’s success story, founder Aman Dhall said, “Our client and media community have helped us build a strong backbone and led our growth journey. We have been focused on improving collaboration with the media, and enhancing client experience from day zero. That will stay our focus going forward as well. We are very proud of our team having diverse industry experience, as well as great business and media understanding for effective storytelling.”  

    CommsCredible is currently working with 20+ partner brands across diverse sectors. Its partner clients include early-stage consumer internet startups such as BASIC Home Loan, Onsurity, Sugmya Finance, global VC firms, technology brands such as Picus Capital, PTC Inc., CAST Software and prominent Indian brands such as Grant Thornton Bharat, In-Solutions Global (ISG) and ICICI Prudential Life Insurance.

    Currently, it has presence across key geographies in India, including Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore & Delhi, and overseas in Europe and the US. The company’s vision is to build a credible community, which thrives on factual information and authentic storytelling that builds trust within the media and communication ecosystem.

  • WOW Skin Science ropes in Vanda Ferrao as CMO

    WOW Skin Science ropes in Vanda Ferrao as CMO

    Mumbai: WOW Skin Science, one of the leading D2C beauty and wellness brands, has announced the appointment of Vanda Ferrao as chief marketing officer. In her new role, Vanda will be responsible for the development and implementation of marketing strategies across all of WOW’s product categories and channels.

    Ferrao brings nearly two decades of brand building and marketing experience from her leadership roles at leading companies including Britannia, Fresh to Home, and Licious.  

    On her joining, Ferrao commented, “I’ve been a consumer and an ardent admirer of WOW’s products and it’s a proud feeling to see a homegrown brand make waves both in India and in global markets. I am excited to be part of this amazing team and look forward to leading marketing as we execute our vision of becoming the leader in the beauty and wellness space”

    WOW Skin Science co-founder Manish Chowdhary said, “We welcome Ferrao to the WOW family. Her expertise and proven success in creating leading brands makes her the perfect partner to channel our business goals into a robust marketing strategy. We’re geared up for some really exciting new developments and with Vanda as part of our leadership team, WOW is sure to grow manifolds.”

  • GUEST COLUMN: How performance marketing helps brands maintain their digital presence

    GUEST COLUMN: How performance marketing helps brands maintain their digital presence

    Mumbai: Performance marketing today holds tremendous control over brand expansion and growth in terms of revenue and brand recognition. Before we dive into the benefits of performance marketing, let’s take a second to understand the term performance marketing better. Performance marketing is a marketing strategy that is centered around data-driven results. This means that the performance marketing agency is paid based on how users interact with the content presented by the brand. This is a measurable feature that makes the marketing technique ideal for companies or brands which are looking to reach their audience directly.

    Today, digital marketing is a field that has long surpassed all traditional methods of advertising. It is quite safe therefore to suggest that without a strong digital footprint, it is near impossible for brands to grow and expand without a strong digital plan in place. According to Statista, the world digital advertising spending, which was approximately $455.3 billion in 2021, will steadily increase to about $646 billion by 2024.

    As per McKinsey, investments in performance marketing tripled considering the figure from $900 million in 2018 to $2.6 billion in 2022. These figures are suitable for summarising the methods of digital marketing for the audience and the brands which are looking forward to growing.

    Directly affects ROI

    Through performance marketing, it is easy for brands around the world to connect and attain new clients and generate a loyal customer base. This is possible because agencies working on performance marketing already have their own established audiences, helping brands increase traffic for their site. Since the model of performance marketing allows for results to be measured in real-time, it directly impacts the ROI. Brands are able to increase their ROI as their content often generates more results under performance marketing.

    Brands can have a wide audience and grow exponentially abroad as well as locally by opting for performance marketing. As per the study conducted by YourStory, brands have seen their marketing profits increase by nearly 30 per cent without having to increase their marketing budget, making this marketing technique a win-win for the brands.

    Helps maintain a strong customer base

    Performance marketing is goal-oriented strategies that aim to increase conversions and sales. For instance, positioning your e-commerce business with a credible influencer allows the customer’s brand to leverage some of that credibility towards your brand or product.  mHere, the payments made are dependent on the content generated through performance marketing that is interactive and conversational with customers. This is how performance marketing helps brands reach their customer base better, through retailers and merchants, and builds a closer connection with the customer. This makes the customer consider the brand more whenever they are making any purchase of goods or services resembling the ones the brand produces.

    As per the research, when brands use performance marketing, they are able to increase their brand retention by 20 per cent. Along with this, they were able to generate their marketing-driven gross by 15 per cent. Performance marketing also has a direct impact on the advertising for the brand. The same search is seen via the optimising channels, resulting in a 14 per cent increase in advertising impact on the sales they make.

    Performance marketing is a need of the hour for businesses around the world and around the corner. Many brands are moving towards performance marketing looking for its promising returns as the revenue generated helps the brands. According to the study conducted by Spiralytics, out of the 2,300 marketers examined, around 62 per cent of the brand and enterprise’s marketing budget was directed towards performance marketing. This is mainly because of the promising results and the numerous benefits that performance marketing offers.

    The most advantageous marketing techniques have already taken off around the world. The figures mentioned above are only set to rise as the world moves forward toward a shift that is dominated by digital marketing. It is safe to say that without investing in performance marketing, brands cannot compete with their counterparts who have a strong digital presence.

    (About Author: Vatsal Rajgor is the co-founder and CEO of Digimaze)