Mumbai: India’s favourite multiformat lifestyle portal, ZeeZest.com unveils its June Digital Cover featuring global artiste Ali Fazal, one of the most sought-after Indian actors in international cinema, as its cover star. As one of India’s most dashing exports to Hollywood, Fazal’s poetic looks and noteworthy acting chops make him the next big crossover star to make India proud.
As the June Cover Star, shot by ZeeZest.com’s exclusive photographer Atul Kasbekar, the multifaceted actor opens up about his commercial Hollywood projects such as Death On The Nile and Kandahar co-starring Gerard Butler, sharing screen space with international icons such as Dame Judi Dench, Gal Gadot, and Kenneth Branagh.
He also shares his thoughts on the ‘Guddu Bhaiya’ fever in India, and his relationship with his partner in life and business – Richa Chadha.
ZeeZest.com’s digital cover shoots, shot exclusively by celebrated photographer and lifestyle influencer Atul Kasbekar, are an endeavour to interact and engage with lifestyle audiences on digital mediums of their choice. Featuring diverse celebrities, the glamourous photoshoots capture snapshots of the many moods, passions, and aspirations of celebrities and the movers and shakers of influence today. As a digital pioneer launched in 2021, ZeeZest.com is a millennial-friendly platform featuring some of the biggest celebrities such as Kate Winslet, Emma Corrin, Farhan Akhtar, Manoj Bajpayee, Prateek Kuhad, Vir Das and bringing their fans up, close, and personal to their icons.
Speaking about being the digital cover for ZeeZest.com’s Ali Fazal said, “I am excited to be on the June digital cover of ZeeZest.com. Given that the website is all about food, travel, wellness, etc. it is great to reach out to my fans across the world and speak about what I love the most in these aspects. The cover story is full of zest and some interesting trivia about my life. I had a good time being a part of it and I hope that the readers enjoy it too.”
Zee Zest’s Business Head Amit Nair said, “ZeeZest.com has always believed in creating impactful and engaging content. The response to our digital covers in the past six months has been stupendous, engaging readers at a phenomenal scale. Ali, with his perseverance and gradual rise to eminence, matches our brand philosophy effortlessly with his personality and performance compelling the global audience to notice his calibre. His fervour and influence make him ideal for ZeeZest.com’s June 2022 digital cover.”
Mumbai: Shoppers Stop has announced Sandeep Jabbal as customer care associate and chief digital transformation and information officer (CDTIO) with effect from 23 May 2022, according to a company statement.
He will be responsible for providing strong leadership and support in digital transformation initiatives led by the brand.
Jabbal has more than 18 years of extensive experience in developing IT strategies and designing & delivering the IT roadmap for large organisations with a focus on digital transformation for enhancing customer experience. Jabbal’s expertise lies in Strategic IT Leadership, IT Operations, Program Management and Digital Transformation.
Prior to joining Shoppers Stop, Jabbal has served as vice-president-IT at Jubilant Foodworks and as Head of IT at Marks & Spencer Reliance India. He has also worked as a project manager with Birlasoft and has delivered large IT projects in diversified domains including FMCG, retail, finance and manufacturing, in his earlier stint.
An alumnus of Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune, he also holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Visvesvaraya National Institute Of Technology (VNIT), Nagpur.
Speaking on the appointment, Shoppers Stop managing director and chief executive officer Venu Nair said, “Digitalisation is reinventing businesses and capturing unique competitive advantages. Today, digital transformation is not an option; it is necessary to escape the comfort zone, reinvent and compete in this world overrun by technological advances. We need to offer best in class experience for our customers and stakeholders.”
“Technology plays a critical role in driving business and building brand authority. With digital strategy as our core focus and its importance for our organisation, we are confident that Sandeep Jabbal is the right fit in helping us achieve this transformation,” he further said.
Sandeep Jabbal added, “I am honoured to join Shoppers Stop at this exciting stage in their digital transformation journey. The brand has truly evolved with the changing consumer dynamics! The retail industry is gearing up with hi-tech advancements and Shoppers Stop is leading the change with its distinct offerings and consumer-friendly digital platforms. I am happy to be a part of this glorious journey and looking forward to working with the stellar team.”
Mumbai: TV9 Network has expanded the role of editor convergence and strategy Deep Upadhyay by appointing him as interim editor of TV9 Hindi and English websites. He will also coordinate with the group’s regional digital assets.
The company said, “TV9 Group has gained undisputed leadership in the broadcast space. The network has made significant strides in the digital arena as well. TV9 aspires to replicate its stupendous success in broadcast across its digital properties.”
“The group, accordingly, is effecting certain strategic changes at the leadership level to ensure TV9 digital emerges as a champion as well,” said the statement.
Deep Upadhyay had joined TV9 Network from News24 where he had a successful stint as managing editor for more than seven years. He is a senior journalist who has worked with various media houses like India TV, Zee News and Dainik Bhaskar.
Mumbai: Aaj Tak India’s no 1 news channel has launched ‘Aaj Tak Campus’ (ATC). It is a one-stop online guide for college admissions and competitive exams, offering creative solutions to students for career planning and skill-building.
The platform provides students with an opportunity to take an Aaj Tak Campus National Aptitude Test (ATCNAT). This unique online exam will enable students to analyse their level of preparation for the entrance exams of their choice. One can take the test after registering on the https://www.aajtakcampus.in.
The catalogue of the exam covers JEE, NEET, CLAT, IPMAT, CUET, SSC-CHSL, SSC-CGL, UPSC-CSE, Bank PO, Bank Clerk.
Participating students will be given an achievement certificate and a test outcome which will include a comprehensive analysis report, including subject-wise breakdown, percentile, and more.
Top rank holders of each category will also feature on the digital platforms of India Today and Aaj Tak.
Mumbai: Havas Group India has decided to part its ways from Langoor, the full-service independent digital agency, according to a company statement.
The digital marketing agency was acquired in 2019 by Havas Group. The rebranded entity was called Langoor Havas.
Havas Group India Group CEO Rana Barua said, “The pandemic allowed us to re-evaluate our vision and some of our goals, and as we revisited the future plans, we realised that Langoor’s new plans were unique but different from ours. So, we came to a mutual decision to part ways. I wish its co-founders all the very best in their journey ahead.”
Langoor co-founder Venugopal Ganganna said, “In the ever-changing world of marketing transformation, we constantly innovate at the intersection of data, creativity, and technology & create new focus spaces and offerings that would deliver true business outcomes. The new refreshed vision and offerings were different from what we had originally envisaged with the Havas Group. Hence, we mutually decided to demerge this association and become independent again. We thank the Havas Group for the short partnership and wish them the best always”.
MUMBAI: After a career spanning over 22 years, dentsuMB Group CEO Sidharth Rao has moved on from the agency. Rao will be leaving the business in December 2022 to return to his entrepreneurial roots,the agency announced in a statement on Wednesday.
dentsuMB India will then come under the additional charge of Isobar India group CEO Heeru Dingra, supported by business leaders Ajit Devraj, Indrajeet Mookerjee and Harsh Shah. The new dentsuMB India leadership team will work with Rao through the transition, and in close partnership with Amit Wadhwa, CEO for the entirety of dentsu’s Creative Service Line for India.
Rao was given the additional responsibility of CEO of the dentsuMB Group in June 2021 as part of dentsu’s restructuring of creative, digital and PR services.
He took over the role of chairman at dentsu’s creative agency Happy mcgarrybowen (HMB) India and Dentsu Webchutney in January 2020. Prior to that, Rao was CEO of dentsu Webchutney, a company he founded along with Sudesh Samaria in 1999, before it was acquired by dentsu in 2013.
Confirming the development, dentsu India Creative Service Line CEO Amit Wadhwa said, “Sid is not just a colleague – he is, and will remain, a dear friend. He has played an instrumental role in dentsu India’s growth and creative journey, as well as in mentoring our talent, which gives me every confidence and much excitement for the next generation of dentsuMB India’s leaders who are already proving formidable.”
“We truly wish Sid every luck as he returns to his entrepreneurial ambition and passion, for which we are sure he will find great success again,” he added.
On his moving on, Sidharth Rao said, “Being acquired by dentsu was by far the most important milestone in Webchutney’s journey. It has been a great, great ride. Dentsu India is making such exciting strides and I am especially happy to see Dentsu Webchutney the strongest it’s ever been. There are absolutely no regrets. I have enjoyed this decade long journey enormously, and great credit goes to the network’s leadership team who I would like to thank dearly for making dentsu feel like home since day one.”
“For my journey ahead, I am exploring new ideas in the exciting online space, with details of my plan ready to be announced in the coming months,” Rao further added.
An integral part of dentsu India’s executive leadership team, Rao has helped build dentsu’s digital and creative capabilities in the market, the agency said in a statement. Under his leadership, dentsu India has been awarded at multiple local as well as major international award shows including Cannes Lions, Spikes Asia, The One Show and D&AD.
Mumbai: The digital marketing agency, PivotRoots has acquired DeepFlux, a MarTech consultancy, for an undisclosed amount. The company will integrate DeepFlux into its Martech lab and consulting division, PivotConsult, in line with its vision to build a result-oriented marketing lab of the future.
Deepflux Co-founder Abhimanyu Vyas will join Yogesh Kothari in leading the new entity PivotConsult as business head. Tarun Taneja who had joined as a late-stage co-founder at DeepFlux would continue being a part of PivotConsult. He was heading AI and ML at DeepFlux & will continue to lead for the joint entity.
Speaking on the acquisition, DeepFlux co-founder Abhimanyu Vyas said, “We believe this association will prove to be a game-changer in serving the needs of Indian and global customers with data analytics and ML-based marketing solutions, especially in the Direct to Consumer(D2C) solutions space to stronghold their pivot’s marketing strategy.
PivotConsult Business head Yogesh Kothari said, “Abhimanyu & team have done a great job in shaping up Deepflux in the last 3 years. They have built some great products across retail, entertainment and digital acquisition pieces and have done some great work in the measurement & CDP part, the acquisition will help us grow faster, with DeepFlux we are already a 35-member team doing some great work for clients across verticals.”
“Our vision is to build a result-oriented marketing lab and consulting vertical that will drive greater efficiencies and outputs for our current and future clients. I am delighted to welcome Abhimanyu, Tarun and the DeepFlux team to PivotRoots as we continue to strengthen our offer to local and global brands,” added PivotRoots Co-founder & Managing Director Shibu Shivanandan.
DeepFlux’s client base includes Disney, Grasim Industries, Fox Studios, Tata Starquik, Damensch, Woodland, GFK, and AT Kearney amongst others.
MUMBAI: How has the exponential growth in consumption of OTT content impacted the tech – especially hardware – infrastructure needs of those running streaming platforms or serving video entertainment to consumers?
That was the main question that was discussed during the tech session at the sixth edition of Indiantelevision.com’s pioneering Vidnet Summit held in end April. Titled Rise of Digital Revolution – Accelerated Growth Led by Disruptive Innovation in the world of OTT, the session featured Dell Technologies medium business leader Radhesh Shankaranarayanan, Sony Pictures Networks India head of Sony LIV Technology Manish Verma, NXTDigital COO Rouse and Indian Television Dot Com founder, CEO & editor-in-chief Anil Wanvari as the moderator.
Ten years from now, this period will be called the digital revolution period across the globe, expounded Shankaranarayanan, referring to the industrial and information revolutions which transformed the world in every way in earlier centuries. “There was a pressure or push to move into digital before this, but the pandemic has actually accelerated the digital drive completely.”
Specifically pointing out to the media and entertainment ecosystem he opined that production houses have suddenly seen a huge amount of video content business flowing into them and, as a result, the demand for Dell workstations and servers has skyrocketed.
“Earlier this segment used to be very niche in terms of technology adoption, but today I have seen so many production houses mushrooming in the last couple of years,” he revealed. “I am currently talking to at least 400-odd production houses in the country- right from Delhi to Trivandrum. Hence we want to be as close to content creation that’s happening. We are really keen on offering even more of them solutions which will help them keep pace with the burgeoning needs by offering them workstations with the fast video processing power they need.”
What demonetisation has done to the payment industry, I think the lockdown has done for the OTT industry, added SPNI’s Manish Verma.
“We have seen consumption increasing crazily during the lockdowns and it has essentially increased in three different areas. One is the premium VOD (video-on-demand) service, people have actually started paying for content where earlier they used to find means to not to pay. Second is sports, which is a very good driver of consumption for us, we offer multiple live sports. That’s where we have seen good consumption happening and that’s always been there.”
Third big area was interactivity- KBC Play along, wherein users can play the same KBC on their devices, while the show is on air, adds Verma. “All three areas require a lot of backend infrastructure, which has increased exponentially for us. We need to make sure that our backend infrastructure is scaled properly to handle the traffic, so that when concurrent users are coming in there is no latency.”
Another phenomena that is happening is the shift in devices from personal mobile viewing patterns to consumption on bigger screens such as smart TVs for a better viewing experience, he noted.
NXTDigital’s Rouse Koshy offered his perspective on how his cable network was impacted on the tech infrastructure front by the increase in video consumption.
“The pandemic didn’t hit us as hard as these guys (OTT platforms) hit us!” he expressed. He went on to add that in the last one and a half year, the company started digitising and coming up with combo products such as broadband with video etc.
“Now in the last six months we have also started aggregating all OTT platforms and selling it as a bouquet.” This transformation is going to be a challenge, admitted Koshy as cable TV operators have a different mindset and to train them to transform is going to be a “humongous exercise.”
4K adoption will need to further demand for tremendous processing power houses of workstation going forward, noted Shankaranarayanan, even as 8K is still distant.
“I am seeing this as another huge additional spend coming in hardware, software and cloud infrastructure along with 5G opening up a totally new experience,” he explained
Going forward, we see this trend of gaming and music, apart from entertainment genres as a part of OTT platforms, revealed Koshy, which would further accelerate hardware needs at the consumer end.
With 5G emerging, we will need to further scale up infrastructure, bandwidth requirement, affirmed Verma in response to Wanvari’s observation about the telecom spectrum transition happening globally which is expected to hit India in the next 12 months or so.
When it comes to Metaverse, it’s too early for us to say how it’ll take off, Koshy confessed, and whether it will end up as a fad. Shankaranarayanan was more optimistic about the surge in hardware infrastructure investments that the metaverse era is going to bring with it. “The compute power is going to be huge, and for that the Dell has products which can cater to the requirement so consumers can have a seamless experience,” he highlighted.
Watch the entire panel discussion on the Rise of Digital Revolution – Accelerated Growth Led by Disruptive Innovation in the world of OTT by clicking on the link here:
Mumbai: Cheil India has appointed Umesh Bopche as the new CEO for its digital agency – Experience Commerce.
Umesh will be responsible in placing Experience Commerce (EC) on an exponential growth trajectory. Under his leadership, Experience Commerce will position itself with a holistic, full-service agency, offering & creating new service lines & verticals for our existing and new clients. Umesh will also be responsible for the live commerce practice & content/film studio for all Cheil clients, including Samsung, through EC Studio.
Umesh has over 20 years of experience in leading media, digital, content, tech & Internet businesses with a track record of delivering strong retention, high growth & building A+ talent teams. Prior to joining EC, Umesh has worked with top media & entertainment conglomerates like Prime Focus Group, Times of India Group (Print), and Times Internet Ltd (Digital Business), while being exposed to the various facets of traditional and new-age media, and helping brands achieve their advertising & communication goals.
Umesh’s rich experience includes working with major brands like Tata Sky, ICICI, Dabur, Amazon, HUL, Big Bazaar, Marico, OPPO, Xiaomi, Tata Motors, Ford, TVS, ITC, Procter & Gamble, Emami, L’Oréal, Myntra, Soch, and Free Fire among many others.
Chiel India chief operating officer Sanjeev Jasani, said, “I am delighted to welcome Umesh into the family. Umesh is an astute & result-oriented business leader with good vision, exactly what Experience Commerce needs at the moment to continue its exponential growth in India. More importantly, he is a good human being who is empathetic towards his people and can bring them together to rally towards a common goal. In my mind, Umesh is a perfect fit for the role. I am sure Umesh will play a crucial part in Cheil India’s growth trajectory in the years to come and make Experience Commerce one of the top digital agencies in India and the APAC Region. I wish Umesh the very best for this role as the CEO of Experience Commerce.”
Umesh Bopche added, “For an individual, two questions become important when making a career move – What can I give to this place, And what can this place give me? And when you’re able to determine a great synergy between the two, it feels like a eureka! That’s precisely what I felt during my interaction with Cheil Worldwide & as I realised the potential within EC while accepting this role. I am very excited with the task in hand to make EC one of the fastest growing company within the Cheil Worldwide network & look forward to this incredible ride.”
L’oreal has appointed Abhishek Grover as the chief digital officer-consumer products, according to his Linkedin profile post.
He will oversee the operations of the south-east Asia pacific, middle-east and North African regions. Earlier, he was heading the digital marketing portfolio at Samsung for the south-east Asia and Oceania (SEAO) region where he was leading the digital marketing strategies and implementing the best practices.
Grover said via his post on LinkedIn recently while announcing his exit from Samsung, “As a digital marketing group in SEAO, we have come a long way! It gives me a great sense of pride that we built a strong and highly capable team that is leading Samsung’s global digital transformation agenda.”
“Whether it was setting up digital shared service operations or building industry first attribution models, it was the innovative and courageous thinking of the team that helped us leap forward,” he added.
