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Tag: Discovery India

  • Discovery India revamps DTamil; enters GEC space

    Discovery India revamps DTamil; enters GEC space

    MUMBAI: Discovery Communications India has revamped DTamil into an entertainment channel which will have best of programming, curated for family audiences in Tamil Nadu, from across Discovery Network including Discovery, Animal Planet, TLC, Discovery Kids, Discovery Science, Discovery Turbo & Scripps Networks Interactive. DTamil will therefore have a very different look and feel as compared to Discovery Channel – which continues to dominate India’s infotainment genre, with its highest quality non-fiction content available in 8 language audio feeds, including Tamil, English, Hindi, Telegu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi and Bengali.

    In a unique initiative which is bound to attract fun seeking audiences across the state, DTamil has roped in famous Tamil actor Karunakaran, in his maiden appearance on TV, as the host of ‘Asaalta Alaravidum Pullingo’ premiering on November 16 at 1:00 pm & 7 pm IST.

    Discovery Communications India has initiated these changes keeping in view the importance of Tamil Nadu, a market with highest regional affinity, with a strong GEC presence.  Discovery India’s detailed consumer study across India, including Tamil Nadu, helped in understanding consumer need gaps.  The learnings from the state of Tamil Nadu clearly pointed towards an infotainment cum entertainment network – a channel which no one else except Discovery could offer. The channel started incorporating the learnings and the results are already visible with DTamil’s viewership increasing by 51% over the last four weeks with any marketing spends.

    “We are excited with how the new proposition of DTamil is shaping up. It is an interesting strategy – one which leverages our strengths and offers us a long-term scale-up of DTamil, said, Discovery Communications India  Director–Content, Factual & Lifestyle Entertainment – South Asia Sai Abishek. On the show with Karunakaran, Sai Abishek, added, “This is the first time that such a show has been created for discerning Tamil audiences. Fail Army is the world-wide leader in funny fail videos and Karunakaran tops and tails these videos in his own inimitable humorous way, making the entire show more endearing. We are very confident that Tamil audience will lap-up this new series.”

    Speaking about his TV debut, Karunakaran, said, “I have never thought of being on TV before but couldn’t refuse this offer for two reasons. Firstly, it came from Discovery, a brand I truly love and propagate and secondly, I loved the concept of Fail Army.  To laugh in the face of failure is a rare ability. It is fun, and at the same time, a strong underlying message of ‘not taking yourself too seriously’ being delivered. What a combination!”

    DTamil is targeting to maximize viewership across time-bands with family friendly formats including comedy, crime, early prime programming to make it a truly differentiated brand. The prime time 9:00 pm band will be focused on tentpole entertainment led by innovative food-based shows like Cutthroat Kitchen followed by paranormal focused programming like Paranormal Witness and A Haunting at 10:00 pm. The 6:00 slot has been earmarked with non-fiction programming with the worldwide popular show Toddlers and Tiaras. Kids related programming has also been scheduled in the morning hours and evening time at 5:00 pm with shows like Little Singham, How Do Animals Do That? and Animals Unleashed.

    Discovery has appointed Fourth Dimension Media Solutions as the Ad Sales partner for Tamil Nadu. Led by industry veteran Shankar. B, Fourth Dimension Media manages ad-sales for leading News Channels as well as Radio Stations in the region.

  • Discovery India and WWF India come together to build a sustainable future for Sundarbans

    Discovery India and WWF India come together to build a sustainable future for Sundarbans

    Mumbai: Discovery India and WWF India have come together to protect the world’s only mangrove tiger habitat, in partnership with the Forest Directorate, Govt. of West Bengal and local communities in the Sundarbans. The initiative builds on WWF India’s work in the region to promote sustainable livelihoods, access to clean energy, and effective human-wildlife conflict management. By adopting an integrated approach, the project aims to assist the Forest Directorate for effectively managing populations of tiger, prey and their habitat in Sundarbans, and reduce human-tiger conflict. It will   work with Panchayats help build resilient communities in this ecologically fragile and climatically vulnerable region.

    The Sundarbans region is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, which threatens the safety and livelihood of local communities. With a vision to create climate-smart villages in the Sundarbans, WWF India and Discovery India are working with government agencies, civil society partners and scientific institutions to build the capacity of village panchayats and local communities to incorporate climate resilience into development planning, thereby helping secure livelihoods, biodiversity and ecosystem services.

    The initiative also focuses on enhancing farmland productivity through low-cost measures and adjusting crop calendars to deal with of climate change. The initiative will also include work towards securing habitats for tigers and prey species. This will entail building datasets on impacts of climate change on the estuarine ecosystem. Through this project, in partnership with the West Bengal Forest Directorate and IISER Kolkata two Sundarbans Ecological Observatories will be set up, each featuring data loggers, monitoring buoys and an onsite laboratory.  

    As part of the partnership, the Forest Directorate has also been supported with nylon net fences to prevent tigers from straying out to villages adjacent to the mangrove forests. Such nylon net fences have contributed greatly towards reducing human injuries and fatalities. A floating camp and speed boat are also being provided to the West Bengal Forest Directorate, to accelerate the response time of forest personnel during various emergency situations.

    Mr. Ravi Singh, Secretary General & CEO, WWF India said, “This partnership between WWF India and Discovery India is significant as it brings together different institutions for the benefit of communities and wildlife of Sundarbans. This additionally includes the setting up of ecological observatories, reduction of human-wildlife conflict and providing scientific inputs for proper management.”

    “The project at Sundarbans is part of a global movement – Project C.A.T – Conserving Acres for Tigers – aimed at building healthy habitats for Tigers wherein we support conserve nearly six million acres of protected land across four countries. In India, beyond Sundarbans, a detailed intervention is also being implemented at Manas Tiger Reserve,” said, Megha Tata, Managing Director – South Asia, Discovery. “Discovery is a purpose-driven company with a mission to educate and inspire audiences around the world. We remain committed to leverage our brand strength to galvanize people power for the cause of Tigers and other endangered species.”

  • Discovery India’s Zulfia Waris quits as VP premium & digital networks

    Discovery India’s Zulfia Waris quits as VP premium & digital networks

    MUMBAI: Discovery India’s vice president – premium and digital networks Zulfia Waris has stepped down from her position, sources have told Indiantelevision.com.

    Zulfia’s portfolio included Discovery India channels across factual and lifestyle categories. Her mandate included overseeing a host of functions like product strategy, creative vision, marketing, as well as launching and executing new digital products for super fans and ultra passionate communities.

    Zulfia joined Discovery in March 2017 from Zee where she was head of programming, non-fiction, and events.

    Prior to joining Zee, she was the VP and head of development of weekend fiction and non-fiction for Star Plus for more than two years. Waris was associated with Star India in various roles. She joined Channel V in July 2008 as a senior executive producer for programming and served there for over four years.

    In 2013, she moved to head the non-fiction development for Star Network where she developed non-fiction concepts and formats with in-house teams and production houses.

  • Discovery India, South Asia head Karan Bajaj launches ed-tech startup

    Discovery India, South Asia head Karan Bajaj launches ed-tech startup

    MUMBAI: Former Discovery India and South Asia head Karan Bajaj has stepped into a new venture by launching an educational technology start-up that is backed by Nexus Venture Partners and Omidyar. 

    Bajaj commenced his career in 2002 as a brand manager at Procter and Gamble. He then served The Boston Consulting Group as the management consultant (project leader) and worked there for about two years.

    He also worked with Kraft Foods Group as marketing director/ P&L leader. He was then elevated to the senior position as senior marketing director/ equity leader.

    Not only this, a best-selling novelist and striving yogi, Bajaj balances his professional career with personal spirituality. His novels Keep Off The Grass and Johnny Down launched his literary career. In June he had his first international novel release—The Yoga of Max’s Discontent.

  • Discovery India unveils unique short-form video destination on Dailyhunt app; Discovery Plus creates waves on the digital media

    Discovery India unveils unique short-form video destination on Dailyhunt app; Discovery Plus creates waves on the digital media

    MUMBAI: Discovery Communications India (DCIN), country’s leading factual entertainment network, has entered into a unique partnership with India’s No 1 News and local content discovery app – Dailyhunt. DCIN has introduced a video destination named Discovery Plus on the home page of Dailyhunt App offering exhilarating short form video content especially customized for the digital audiences in India. The content across Discovery’s strong verticals of Outdoor, Food, Wildlife, Science and Military is currently available in five languages namely English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu and Bengali.

    This win-win partnership will help DCIN immediately expand its footprint on the digital domain in India leveraging 153 million monthly user base of Dailyhunt platform. On the other hand, Dailyhunt will be enriched with the unrivalled content library and upcoming titles of Discovery thus helping nurture passionate communities looking for factual entertainment on digital media.

    Within 9 days of the soft launch, the Discovery Plus section has received more than 50 million views and more than 4 million unique users visited the Discovery Plus section on the Dailyhunt app.  DCIN aims to refresh videos on Discovery Plus, ranging from 1-5 minutes, on a daily basis to engage with the emerging superfans community.

    Talking about the initiative, Simon Robinson, Managing Director, Discovery Asia Pacific and Chief Financial Officer, Discovery International, said, “The partnership with Dailyhunt offers us an exciting opportunity to understand, analyze and explore India’s burgeoning digital play. We are delighted with the initial trends, they further reinforce our belief that Discovery’s content offers immense unexplored potential for the digital domain in India.”

    Umang Bedi, President, Dailyhunt, said, “At Dailyhunt, we are super excited about this partnership with Discovery. We understand Bharat and its content needs the best and we feel very confident about Discovery’s content being a massive hit with vast diaspora of India. This partnership is completely aligned with our overall content plans of providing unique, exclusive, high quality content from great content partners like Discovery as we rapidly scale our business.” 

    The multi-year agreement, exclusive for the featured short-form content on Discovery Plus, will offer scalable monetization opportunity to the two organizations.

  • Megha Tata is Discovery’s pick for south Asia managing director

    Megha Tata is Discovery’s pick for south Asia managing director

    MUMBAI: This morning, we broke the news that Business Television India (BTVI) COO Megha Tata had put in her papers. Her last day at the business news channel would be 15 March 2019. We had an inkling that she would hop on to Discovery India as its India (more specifically south Asia) boss, filling a position that has been vacant since Karan Bajaj quit to set up his own venture. But pending confirmation, we did not put out the report.

    This morning the confirmation came in as Discovery Asia Pacific sent out a release stating that the broadcast veteran and affable professional is indeed taking over Discovery Communications India as it south Asia managing director.  She will be joining the firm effective 1 April 2019. A veteran of the media & entertainment industry, Megha has received multiple industry accolades in an illustrious career spanning more than 28 years. She has held leadership positions across eminent broadcasters such as BTVI, HBO, Turner International, and STAR TV. 

    Megha will be based in Mumbai and report to Discovery Asia Pacific managing director and Discovery International chief financial officer Simon Robinson.

    “Megha is a seasoned professional, with an extensive and proven track record of leading multiple broadcast businesses in India. We are incredibly excited to welcome Megha, and her vision, at this important juncture as we aim to actualize the potential of such a key market,” said Simon Robinson. “I look to her leadership to provide a differentiated strategic direction to Discovery India with twin objectives of – accelerating growth in the core business and strengthen the product portfolio with new offerings in line with the evolving expectations of the market.”

    Commenting on the development, Megha Tata, said, “Having been a passionate superfan of Discovery myself, I am really excited to lead Discovery’s mandate in the region. I look forward to working closely with the India management team to help build an aggressive growth path for the company in this rapidly changing media landscape.”

  • Discovery India head Karan Bajaj calls it a day

    Discovery India head Karan Bajaj calls it a day

    MUMBAI: There’s change coming at the top at Discovery India. India head Karan Bajaj has decided to move on to pursue his own entrepreneurial venture.

    This was disclosed to Discovery India staff by president and CEO Discovery Networks International JB Perrette earlier in memo today.  JB as he is known to all in the industry elaborated that Karan will continue to stay in his role for the next few months until a replacement is found. 

    “It will be business as usual. While our leader in India will change, our ambition and belief in you as a team remains unchanged…we want to grow and innovate our business in this big and dynamic market,” says Perrette in the note.

    Perrette is full of praise for Karan in the memo. Says he: “Karan has embodied many of our company’s guiding principles – “purposeful” as he passionately lead a bold swing to create a new type of purpose driven GE channel in India with Jeet; a creative dreamer who believed we could invest in a great team who could take a small kids channel from the lowest rankings to being a top three kids network; consumer obsessed by launching new digital products that focused on making our brands and content more relevant to India’s exploding digital consumers; and quick and agile with a great sense of urgency and drive to reinvent and expand our business. These leadership are ones we will also look for in the next leader of our team and business in India as they remain critical for our future.”

  • Discovery India boss Karan Bajaj brushes aside claims of challenges in the infotainment genre

    Discovery India boss Karan Bajaj brushes aside claims of challenges in the infotainment genre

    MUMBAI: Is there a leadership scuffle going on in the overcrowded Indian infotainment genre? If you were to look at the last four weeks’ numbers as provided by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), it apparently looks like there may be the makings of one. Though it might be a minor one.

    Let’s lay out the facts first: market leader Discovery enjoys a 23 per cent All India Urban (2+) market share in the infotainment genre, which is a healthy eight per cent over second placed Animal Planet, another Discovery property. Interestingly, when Discovery Tamil is factored into the numbers game, the channel’s share of the pie grows by four per cent. That places the Discovery network miles ahead of anyone else with a national market share of a massive 42 per cent. 

    Now on to the minor round of fisticuffs that is taking place. Yesterday, Sony BBC Earth laid out some data claiming that it had edged out Discovery. There was a caveat here: the Tushar Shah-led channel is marginally leading in only the six metros, with  5291 impressions (000s) sum as compared to Discovery with 4965impressions (000s) sum. 

    One of the reasons why – industry sources point out – the Discovery India boss Karan Bajaj should not be perturbed by this is because Sony BBC Earth has acquired the market share recently by investing aggressively in distribution on different distribution platforms in the six metros, which he has refrained from doing. While aggressive distribution ploys are indeed becoming standard practice in the competitive Indian TV distribution marketplace, the marginal lead has come to Sony BBC Earth at a cost.

    Hence the lanky, bespectacled young professional, who has been helming Discovery India for the past two years, is pleased with how the team is performing at the moment. 

    “I just feel incredibly proud with what the organisation has achieved in these two years because our employee strength has remained the same and we launched big initiatives and have also created original content for kids,” he told Indiantelevision.com during an exclusive chat.

    He proudly pointed out to the fact that in the year 2018 so far, Discovery has reached 30 million audiences per week, while Animal Planet reached 24 million. The other players: National Geographic and Sony BBC  Earth have managed a reach of 23 million and 19 million per week respectively. 

    Bajaj’s enthusiasm about his brand and its growth stems from the fact that the network has expanded despite making big bets and taking bold steps like launching Jeet and Veer, a digital channel over the past twelve months.

    “So every level that we look at, we are very proud of the organisation that despite taking big bold leaps, the core infotainment television focus continues to be unchallenged,” he said.

    Bajaj  points out that the ratings of Discovery Kids have grown by 360 per cent since the start of the year, with the channel being the home to two out of the top three Indians local IPs (Little Singham and Bandhbuk Aur Burbak).

    In the lifestyle segment, TLC is ranked number one, with a 33 per cent share (2+, urban). The channel has witnessed a growth of over 10 per cent over the last year when it was placed second on the list with a 30 per cent share. With a 14 per cent upswing in impressions over the past year, eight out of the top 10 shows in the lifestyle genre are from the TLC stable, points out Bajaj.

    “Overall if I look at the channel, the majority is global content and talking about the recent shows, there are very strong human interest stories which have knowledge and information that are at the heart of every one of them,” Bajaj said explaining the channel’s storytelling style and narrative.

    The one blip on Discovery’s progress chart has been Jeet, the bold bet Hindi fictionalized factual entertainment channel that didn’t exactly pan out as planned. That should soon be forgotten because the bubbling with energy Bajaj has a lot more planned going forward for Discovery India with new shows and another digital foray on the anvil. And of course he has the full support and confidence of his Europe-based boss JB Perrette that should aide him greatly as the network goes about doing its business in the quickly evolving Indian total video (which is how JB defines the TV acronym) marketplace.

  • Discovery India to premiere adventure series Ed Stafford: Left for Dead on 14th July

    Discovery India to premiere adventure series Ed Stafford: Left for Dead on 14th July

    MUMBAI: LEFT FOR DEAD is an epic new adventure series, premiering on Discovery Channel this Saturday, July 14th at 7 pm Sat-Sun, that follows explorer and adventurer Ed Stafford in his attempt to escape from some of our planet’s most extreme environments. On the move without food, it takes just 10 days for the human body to start to shut down. So, that’s how long Ed is giving himself to escape the subtropical forests, parched deserts and desolate mountains that await him.

    Using only natural navigation, Ed relies on his wits and survival skills to make split-second decisions as he travels without basic survival gear. With just his camera kit to document each journey, he has no map, compass, knife, camping equipment, food or water – pushing the limits of human endurance on the move. He must rely on instinct and his will to live to combat hunger, thirst, fatigue and life-threatening obstacles. The challenges that Ed faces are in fact so dangerous that an expert rescue team tracks him from afar – ready to venture out to retrieve him at a moment’s notice. However, the distance between Ed and his emergency crew means that certain situations could still prove perilous for Ed, given the risk that they arrive too late.

    In this new series, Ed proves that survival is more than just a test of physical strength – it takes mental agility and unyielding determination to make it out alive. Watch as he takes on Bolivia’s Atacama Desert, Panama’s Darien Gap, the Asian forests of Laos and the coastal mangroves of Madagascar, Mongolia’s Altai Mountains and Bulgaria’s Rhodope Mountains. This is as close to real survival as Ed can get.

  • Discovery JEET rewrites history with a reach of 140 million plus on the launch day

    Discovery JEET rewrites history with a reach of 140 million plus on the launch day

    MUMBAI: Discovery JEET, the new entertainment channel from Discovery India, with meaningful content spanning biopics, historicals, crime and comedy was launched on February 12 with a reach of 140 million across India. Discovery Communication India has tied-up with leading MSOs and DTH players to ensure that Discovery JEET is available in base pack with a top 10 EPG position.

    Speaking on the occasion, Vijay Rajput, SVP & Head – Affiliate Sales, Discovery Communications India, said, “We are delighted with the overwhelming support that we have received from the cable fraternity. We thank all the affiliate partners in helping us rewrite history. It is a matter of pride that Discovery JEET has launched with a reach of 140 million plus – a feat never achieved before in the annals of TV history in India.”