ITV

Tag: FoodFood

  • Helios Media wins FoodFood’s ad sales duties

    Mumbai: Divya Radhakrishnan‘s Helios Media has won the revenue monetisation services for Sanjeev Kapoor‘s food and lifestyle channel, FoodFood.

    The channel‘s decision to partner with Helios Media is based on its assessment of the agency‘s strength and ability, said FoodFood co-founder and director Sanjeev Kapoor.

    Radhakrishnan said, “With a dedicated food channel and even the GECs going the food route with primetime reality shows, we know that the food space is just beginning to simmer. With the fresh Chef‘s hat acquired by Helios Media, we are confident of the dishes panning out in the coming year.”

    For the record, FoodFood is a joint venture between renowned Chef Sanjeev Kapoor and Malaysia based media conglomerate Astro Media. The channel has just completed two years.

    Meanwhile, launched in 2013, Helios Media is a specialty services company for broadcasters with verticals in sales, marketing, content advisory, content syndication, research and traffic management.

  • Divya Radhakrishnan launches Helios Media

    Divya Radhakrishnan launches Helios Media

    MUMBAI: Divya Radhakrishnan, who had quit in February this year as president of TME, the media arm of Rediffusion-Y&R, has launched her own venture, Helios Media.

    Helios Media, an integrated ancillary service company for television broadcasters, has collaborated with specialised partners to complement services in all allied areas. It has set up Sales, Marketing, Research and Traffic management verticals and will offer the services as a composite piece or as a stand-alone, based on the requirements of the broadcasters.

    The company has set up offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai.

    The company has also roped in former business head of Zoom, Bala Iyengar as business director. He will lead the sales and content syndication function at the company.

    According to the official communique, the vision of this company has been crafted on the premise that the increasing number of TV channels in India is facing a key business challenge. While content is the primary scope of these channels, a lot of effort has to be invested in creating a robust eco-system to run the business. This puts in a lot of stress on the channel business head, resulting in dilution of focus from the key delivery, which is content. Also, the proliferation will lead to further slicing of the revenue pie making the all-encompassing business model non-viable.

    The company has already signed up two music channels — MTunes and Music Express — as clients. It has also partnered with World Media Connect (WMC) as its Asian arm. WMC markets Indian Channels to the ethnic population based in US and UK. The portfolio includes six channels of the Sun TV Network (Sun TV, KTV, Gemini TV, Udaya TV, Gemini Movies, Surya TV) and Punjjabi TV at present.

    Helios Media said that with the above contracts already in place, it is in advanced stages of negotiations with four speciality channels coming into India.

    Radhakrishnan has over 24 years of rich experience in the business of media management. She has worked with leading advertising agencies like Publicis and Rediffusion Y&R. In her last assignment, she headed the Contact Practice at Rediffusion Y&R wherein the Media company TME, Public Relations company Rediffusion PR and the Event Management company Showdiff Worldwide were under her leadership.

    Meanwhile, Iyengar, who has over 14 years of experience, has worked with leading media networks like Times of India, Sony Entertainment Television, Star Network and MTV.

  • ‘Food chnnls have tremendous potential to grow’ : FoodFood COO Karthik Lakshminarayan

    ‘Food chnnls have tremendous potential to grow’ : FoodFood COO Karthik Lakshminarayan

    FoodFood, one of the three recently launched food specialty channels in India, is completing six months on 24 July. With Sanjeev Kapoor and Astro as promoters and Madhuri Dixit as the lifestyle promoter, the channel took up the challenge of growing a new genre in India.

     

    Indiantelevision.com‘s Gaurav Laghate caught up with FoodFood COO Karthik Lakshminarayan to talk about the plans ahead and the journey so far.

     

    Excerpts:

    FoodFood is completing six months of operations. Has it been a bumpy or a smooth ride for a channel that is exploring a new genre in India?
    We are on track as per our business plan. We launched in January and as we are completing our first phase, we are seeing a healthy growth in terms of ratings as well as revenues.

     

    Being a speciality channel in Hindi, our connectivity in the Hindi speaking markets is approximately 60 per cent, which is quite good. Also if you see our reach, we have a 5.7 per cent reach in C&S households, while in the core TG of Female 25+ Sec ABC, our reach is almost 9 per cent.

    Isn‘t the ratings too narrow at this stage?
    Our reach is growing and in the core TG we are in the 8-12 GRPs (gross rating points) band. We are more than double of the competition (Zee Khana Khazana and Food First) in terms of ratings as well as time spent on the channel. Our weekly average time spent is over 30 minutes per user, which is extremely healthy.

     

    So, you see, there is no immediate competition. However, having said that, we do feel there is more potential for the genre to grow. But there is no benchmark as such. If you see the US market, the food channels are doing really well, and we see similar potential here also.

    So are you planning to take the channel overseas?
    There are definitely plans to take the channel to the international markets. We have already signed carriage deals in the Middle East and will launch FoodFood there soon. We are a Hindi food channel and will cater mainly to the Indian diaspora.

    FoodFood seems to be the only channel in this genre that is spending on distribution. How big is your carriage payout?
    I do not call it spend. It is an investment me make for distributing the channel. And as far as our position on the cable platform is concerned, we try to get in the Hyper-band and we are also available on S-band in certain markets.

     

    The industry is very dynamic and one has to always fight for the right band.

     

    Having said that, we are now entering into the second phase of growth. We will step up our investments in distribution, marketing and content.
    ‘We are now entering into the second phase of growth. We will step up our investments in distribution, marketing and content. ‘

    And in content?
    When we launched the channel, the buzz generated by Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit (lifestyle ambassador of the channel), and Sanjeev Kapoor (promoter, celebrity chef) took us to a certain level. Now with our programming, we are going to cash on it.

     

    Very soon, you will see the launch of our biggest reality show – Maha Challenge which will have both Dixit and Kapoor and their teams of women and men battling it out to answer who is the better cook – men or women. It is a battle of sexes in its true sense. The 13-part series is being produced by Fremantle India. We will launch it in September and you will see Dixit for the first time in this role on television.

     

    We will also launch another reality show Secret Recipes in which people will come with their recipes and will cook with Kapoor.

    How many advertisers do you have on board now?
    We have over a dozen advertisers right now including Amul and Samsung. Most of them are either kitchen appliances or food related clients, who get perfect exposure on FoodFood.

     

    And all these get integrated seamlessly in the shows that we air. We do not want to clutter our shows with advertisements at this time and we have only 4-5 minute ads in the half-hour slots.