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Tag: digital venture

  • Asiaville, Sashi Kumar’s new digital venture launched

    Asiaville, Sashi Kumar’s new digital venture launched

    MUMBAI: Asiaville, a Multi-Lingual, Multimedia and Multi Platform digital media venture focused on producing original content across Indian languages is now live across digital media platforms. Backed by veteran media practitioner Sashi Kumar, Founder of Asianet and the Asian College of Journalism; and Tuhin Menon, Former President, Culture Machine, the company seeks to reimagine journalism for a new generation audience. Asiaville produces content in multimedia formats, with equal emphasis on Video, Audio and Text.

    Asiaville has launched its websites and is across all social media platforms. The four language websites are: https://www.asiavillenews.com, https://hindi.asiavillenews.com, https://tamil.asiavillenews.com and https://malayalam.asiavillenews.com. Asiaville has offices in Chennai, Delhi and Kochi, with each office housing state-of-the-art integrated studio’s equipped to output multimedia content formats in short spans of time for a digital first audience. Live streaming will be a prominent feature of the Asiaville stable, helping redefine the concept of prime time on traditional media. With a strong focus on product and technology, Asiaville intends to leverage the latest advances in Machine Learning to deliver highly personalized content to end users across languages.

    At the occasion, Asiaville also announced their associations with Twitter and IIT Madras. Asiaville is teaming up with Twitter on a series of Live streams in English, Hindi and Tamil in the run up to the 2019 general elections. Leveraging its strength in producing original content across languages, Asiaville will be conducting live discussions with Twitter influencers. The Tamil live streams will be hosted weekly on Fridays from Asiaville's studio in Chennai; and the English and Hindi bi-lingual livestream will be broadcast from its Delhi’s office on Wednesdays. 

    Asiaville is also working with researchers at IIT Madras to build out their machine learning capabilities, with the objective of targeting users across languages with a great degree of personalization. This tie-up would enable Asiaville to build personalized original content driven user feeds for each of the languages, part of its core mission to build product offerings around the core users taste profile.

    Sashi Kumar, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, Asiaville said “The news media today are at crossroads. They are facing new challenges – technological, political and commercial. There is a fatigue operating on the mainstream media which find themselves buffeted by the freewheeling social media on the one hand and the technology platforms purveying media on the other. It is therefore time to reimagine and reinvent journalism, particularly for the millennial who engages less and less  with the legacy media. Asiaville, with its multimedia, hybrid heterodox approach, hopes to meet that growing demand of the near and medium term future.”

    Online media consumption in India is going through a phase of tremendous growth. Digital and  mobile devices are now the preferred medium of data consumption online. The smartphone market has seen unprecedented growth over the last 5 years, its penetration in India is expected to touch 470 million by the end of 2019. India currently has the second largest internet user base of 566 million in the world and is growing exponentially. Internet adoption in the country is now propelled by rural India which registered a 35% growth over the past year and is expected to reach 290 million users by the end of 2019.

    According to Tuhin Menon, CEO, Asiaville, “With 9 out of 10 new internet users likely to be an Indian language user over the next five years, Asiaville seeks to address this burgeoning audience that is coming online through an innovative mix of original content formats that are native to digital platforms. We believe we have the right mix of original content expertise and product acumen to build a pan-Indian language network that is focused on the millennial. We are excited to have embarked on this journey and see great potential for scale and engagement with our digital first audience going forward”.

    Asiaville’s ‘Journalism reimagined’ project  leverages the new and emerging digital technology to provide better context, perspective and experiential understanding of the developments that inform and transform our times and our lives. It puts the millennial at the centre of its process of making meaning of our world. It is not about breaking news; it’s about fixing broken news. It is not about news as product; it’s about the process of news generation for the new generation. 

  • DreamWorks, Reliance, Participant Media, eOne form new film, TV & digital venture

    DreamWorks, Reliance, Participant Media, eOne form new film, TV & digital venture

    MUMBAI: DreamWorks Studios principal partner Steven Spielberg, Participant Media chairman Jeff Skoll, Reliance Group chairman Anil Ambani and Entertainment One (eOne) president and CEO Darren Throop have announced the formation of a new film, television and digital content creation company called Amblin Partners.

     

    The new company will create content using the Amblin, DreamWorks Pictures and Participant brands and leverage their power and broad awareness to tell stories that appeal to a wide range of audiences. Participant Media will remain a separate company that continues to independently develop, produce and finance projects with socially relevant themes.

     

    Amblin Partners will be led by CEO Michael Wright and president and COO Jeff Small.

     

    In addition, Amblin Television will become a division of Amblin Partners and continues to be run by co-presidents Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank, who maintain their longtime leadership roles. They join producer Kristie Macosko Krieger and president of production Holly Bario on the film side, to complete Amblin Partners’ senior management team.

     

    Participant Media CEO David Linde and Participant’s narrative feature team, led by executive vice president Jonathan King, will work closely with Amblin Partners to develop and produce specific content for the new venture in addition to exploring opportunities for co-productions and other content.

     

    Spielberg said, “We are thrilled to partner with Jeff Skoll, Participant Media, and to continue our prolific relationship. We are of like minds, as our many collaborations have illustrated, with a mutual commitment to quality, premium entertainment and global vision.”

     

    Skoll added, “I have had the good fortune of working with Steven for many years. We share a passion for stories that can truly affect change. And this new venture will further Participant’s growth and global impact.”

     

    DreamWorks Studios and Participant Media have collaborated on many Academy Award nominated films such as Lincoln and The Help as well as the critically acclaimed The Hundred-Foot Journey, and the recently released Bridge of Spies.

     

    Spielberg continued, “We are honoured to continue our long-term association with our dear friend, Anil Ambani and his team at Reliance. We have had the opportunity to develop and produce wonderful films thanks to their ongoing support.”

     

    “We are delighted to continue our now seven-years-strong relationship with our valued partner, Steven Spielberg, and to extend this alliance to the formation of Amblin Partners with Jeff Skoll. We look forward to the combination of Steven’s passion and integrity with Jeff’s unique socially conscious vision to create uplifting and quality content to entertain global audiences,” Ambani said.

     

    Spielberg said, “We are also grateful to Darren Throop and his team at Entertainment One for their contribution to Amblin Partners. We look forward to expanding our relationship.”

     

    “We are delighted to join Steven Spielberg, Jeff Skoll and Reliance in launching this unique new venture,” Throop said. “We continually strive to partner with producers of the highest quality content, and Amblin Partners certainly represents the gold standard.”

     

    Through this new partnership, eOne extends its collaboration into television production and distribution and expands its successful film distribution relationship across additional territories. eOne will handle the direct distribution of Amblin Partners films on a multi-territory output basis in Australia/New Zealand and Spain as well as the United Kingdom and the Benelux, where it previously had a successful output arrangement with DreamWorks Studios.

     

    J.P.Morgan Chase structured and arranged the $500 million debt syndication together with Comerica Bank, which served as co-lead. Other financial institutions involved included Sun Trust Bank, Union Bank, City National Bank and Bank of America, among others.