Tag: customer experience

  • Kinnect launches CX practice, appoints Bharatesh Salian to lead

    Kinnect launches CX practice, appoints Bharatesh Salian to lead

    Mumbai: Digital media company Kinnect on Wednesday announced the launch of its customer experience (CX) practice. The agency has named Bharatesh Salian as senior vice president – marketing science and CX, who will be heading this new division.

    The CX practice will provide meaningful brand interactions throughout the consumer journey. It unites nearly 100 of Kinnect’s creative, media, and technology talent pools across locations.

    “Kinnect CX will provide e-commerce and order management solutions, CRM, loyalty and first party data management programs, platform consulting and implementation services, ML, AI & data led solutions, omnichannel consumer experience journeys and web 3.0 solutions. The offering will help partner with clients towards their digital transformation journey and fuel their customer-centric ambition,” said the agency in a statement. “Deployment of a complete state-of-the-art usability testing lab is in the works and will be operational by 2023,” it added.

    “Kinnect has strong partnerships with brands across experience design, CRM, and data delivery, but what we realised is it could be more effective together—with the client, at new business, in sharing best practices and unlocking new doors,” commented Kinnect CEO Rohan Mehta. “According to today’s new reality, people are accustomed to online experiences and expect them to translate as smoothly and effectively as they would in person. Through the KinnectCX network, we’ll be able to more efficiently and smoothly put together a bespoke team for each opportunity, with expertise in strategy, design, analytics, technology and content.”

    Saliana is a seasoned professional with more than 22 years of experience in the digital media and customer experience space. His past stints have been with large networks such as Publicis Groupe, Omnicom Media Group, and IPG. 

    “Times have changed, and marketing online has hit a revolution,” remarked Bharatesh Salian. “It’s no longer about the one-sided conversation but rather about building relationships and having conversations with our consumers in a hyperconnected world. It’s also about pushing the boundaries to understand your consumer better and make communication plans carved out of customer journeys.” 

  • Discovery acquires assets of ad-tech company Zedo

    Discovery acquires assets of ad-tech company Zedo

    Mumbai: Discovery Inc on Wednesday announced that it has acquired the assets, technology and intellectual property of Zedo, an advertising technology company based in both the United States and India.

    The acquisition will bring Zedo’s technology in-house and enable faster innovation across Discovery’s ad solutions. This acquisition brings key ad technology platform capabilities, including a supply-side platform (SSP) and real-time bidding (RTB) capabilities, which enhances Discovery’s global direct-to-consumer (DTC) platforms, improves the consumer experience and drives monetisation, said the media company in a statement. 

    As part of the acquisition, Discovery will also onboard employees of Zedo based in India and the United States, it added.

    “This deal will bring the Discovery and Zedo teams together to enhance the overall consumer ad experience, as well as help push new innovation by integrating Zedo’s capabilities with our global direct-to-consumer platform,” said Discovery Inc executive vice president DTC – global technology Sudheer Sirivara. “We are excited to welcome the Zedo team to the rapidly growing technology presence in our India development center, which is a strategic priority for us to build talent and expertise across the country to help scale globally.”

    “Discovery entered the streaming space with the launch of discovery+ and quickly became an industry leader,” said Zedo co-founder and chief executive officer Roy de Souza. “With the acquisition of Zedo’s assets, Discovery will have its own proprietary real-time bidding (RTB) platform and SSP to sell advertising programmatically. Discovery’s advertisers will soon have one place to buy advertising on a high-quality set of streaming platforms and reach Discovery’s vast global audiences.”

    The Zedo asset acquisition builds on Discovery’s acquisition of AdSparx’s assets in 2020, which brought server-side-ad-insertion (SSAI) capability to Discovery’s global tech platform. The combination of Zedo’s technology with Discovery’s SSAI and global video platform will deliver unparalleled video and ad experiences to our consumers worldwide.