ITV

Tag: Manoj Padmanabhan

  • Manoj Padmanabhan takes charge as chief growth officer at Smitson Entertainment

    Manoj Padmanabhan takes charge as chief growth officer at Smitson Entertainment

    MUMBAI: In a career move that straddles the worlds of OTT and grassroots sports, Manoj Padmanabhan has taken over as chief growth officer at Smitson Entertainment. The announcement was made public via Linkedin, where Padmanabhan confirmed he would continue in his role as chief revenue officer at Sportvot while spearheading growth at Smitson.

    Smitson Entertainment is building its identity around storytelling for the new-age Indian audience. From web series and show formats pitched to top OTT players to music IPs designed for global stage experiences, the company aims to put Indian creative narratives in the global spotlight. Padmanabhan’s entry comes at a time when Smitson is ramping up content pipelines and forging international collaborations.

    “Pranaay Pradhaan let’s make this count”, Padmanabhan said in a post, hinting at an ambitious new chapter.

    Padmanabhan brings more than two decades of experience across sports broadcasting, digital media, and entertainment. Currently at Sportvot, he has been instrumental in building a cost-effective live streaming platform tailored for community and grassroots sports. Under his leadership, Sportvot launched the Sportvot Cloud Studio—a web-based production tool enabling multi-camera sports broadcasts from smartphones, professional rigs, or even AI-driven cameras.

    Prior to this, Padmanabhan held leadership roles at Alpha Metaverse Technologies, Total Esports (TES), Dailyhunt, and Star TV Network, where he led niche sports sales and helped establish leagues like Pro Kabaddi and Premier Badminton League. He also played a foundational role in shaping Indian Super League (ISL) at RISE Worldwide, transforming India’s football broadcast ecosystem.

    With his music initiative Soulful Vibrations and past ventures into production and programming at Ten Sports and UTV, Padmanabhan brings a multidisciplinary flair to the table—equally at home with tech stacks and turntables.

    As Smitson positions itself at the intersection of entertainment, technology, and cultural storytelling, Padmanabhan’s blend of experience, agility and industry foresight could help shape a powerful creative engine built for scale.

  • Amazon Web Services appoints Manoj Padmanabhan as M&E business development head

    Amazon Web Services appoints Manoj Padmanabhan as M&E business development head

    KOLKATA: Amazon Web Services has appointed Manoj Padmanabhan as media and entertainment business development head. Prior to this, he was associated with Horizon Broadcast Electronics Pvt Ltd as director. 

    Padmanabhan’s experience spans over more than two decades in several industries including durables, telecom, broadcast, digital media. He has handled leadership roles in general management, P&L, sales & business development, marketing/brand management. 

    He worked with brands like Videocon, Sansui, Toshiba, Tata Indicom, Zee. He was associated with Zee for eight years where he also served as business head of Ditto TV.

  • DittoTV names Archana Anand as business head

    DittoTV names Archana Anand as business head

    MUMBAI: Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd’s (ZEEL) OTT platform DittoTV has appointed Archana Anand as business head.

    Anand steps into the shoes of erstwhile head Manoj Padmanabhan, who put in his papers at the company last month.

    The appointment comes at a time when the OTT industry is at an influx point with competition from the likes of Netflix, Hotstar, Sony Liv, ErosNow et al hotting up. In such a scenario, Zee is looking to focus on DittoTV with renewed strategy in order to have a substantial global offering in the space. 

    Anand comes with close to 20 years of experience across domains. 

    In her previous role as Zee Digital Convergence vice president and head of global business development, Anand had under her gamut responsibilities such as business development, client relationship, product ideation and execution and all of the allied marketing campaigns.

    Prior to Zee, Anand was with OnMobile Global as director and head of information and entertainment services.

  • DittoTV names Archana Anand as business head

    DittoTV names Archana Anand as business head

    MUMBAI: Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd’s (ZEEL) OTT platform DittoTV has appointed Archana Anand as business head.

    Anand steps into the shoes of erstwhile head Manoj Padmanabhan, who put in his papers at the company last month.

    The appointment comes at a time when the OTT industry is at an influx point with competition from the likes of Netflix, Hotstar, Sony Liv, ErosNow et al hotting up. In such a scenario, Zee is looking to focus on DittoTV with renewed strategy in order to have a substantial global offering in the space. 

    Anand comes with close to 20 years of experience across domains. 

    In her previous role as Zee Digital Convergence vice president and head of global business development, Anand had under her gamut responsibilities such as business development, client relationship, product ideation and execution and all of the allied marketing campaigns.

    Prior to Zee, Anand was with OnMobile Global as director and head of information and entertainment services.

  • DittoTV enters Limca Book of Records

    DittoTV enters Limca Book of Records

    MUMBAI: Zee Group’s OTT platform DittoTV has entered Limca Book of Records for being the only OTT platform to present to its subscribers content offering for most number of registered channels across 13 languages.

     

    DittoTV is the sole OTT platform to be conferred with this recognition. DittoTV showcases TV shows, movies and videos in various languages alongside having specially designed video content which is available on Android, Windows and iOS based phones, tablets and computer systems.

     

    A key reason for dittoTV to break the record was due to the fact that it offers viewers an engaging content mix from sports, GEC, music, news to movies and also has its live broadcast from 13 popular religious shrines of India, which include Siddhivinayak Temple,Kashi Vishwanath Temple, Iskcon Temple, Vrindavan, Dargah Hazrat Sheikh Salim Chisti to name a few.

     

    Moreover, the platform also offers eight Pakistani channels along with international news channels like BBC, Al Jazeera and CNN amongst others across the globe in more than 130 countries. The platform also offers HD channels for its subscribers.

     

    DittoTV business head Manoj Padmanabhan said, “It is a proud moment for us since this record further reaffirms our aim to creating newer benchmarks in the category. We have always strived to push the boundaries and be innovators in every endeavour that we set forth. With the bouquet of content that has earned dittoTV the laurel of being honoured by the Limca Book of Records team, we envision more such laurels, keeping benchmarks at the helm as we aim to grow aggressively in this financial year.”

  • Ditto TV partners with portals to widen subscriber base

    Ditto TV partners with portals to widen subscriber base

    MUMBAI: Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited’s (Zeel) OTT TV app Ditto TV has inked a tie up with the recharge portal Freecharge that allows users to recharge their services online. The service also offers added benefits on every transaction.

     

    Users who subscribe to Ditto TV through Freecharge.in (www.freecharge.in) get a discount of Rs 50 on the monthly subscription of Rs 150. All one has to do is enter his/her mobile number, recharge amount, select Ditto TV under the entertainment category and avail the offer.

     

    The OTT app also tied up with cashkaro.com (www.cashkaro.com), a portal that provides free and discounted coupons for various products on their catalogue. Users can avail of the Ditto TV quarterly subscription pack of Rs 399 at only Rs 199 using the promo code Ditto399.

     

    Speaking about the tie-ups, Ditto TV business head Manoj Padmanabhan said, “Our association with freecharge.in and cashkaro.com allows us to reach out a wider base of users and thus acquire more subscribers for the product.”

  • Ditto TV partners with Hull to power customer engagement

    Ditto TV partners with Hull to power customer engagement

     MUMBAI: Ditto TV, a distribution platform from Zee New Media, the digital arm of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL) has announced its partnership with the unified customer engagement platform, Hull to strengthen its customer engagement activities.

    The partnership with Hull will provide unified identity management, cross-domain single sign-on, social login and engagement mechanics across their next-generation iOS, Android and Web applications users. These features will be available to Ditto TV’s over one million registered customer base and a potential audience of 700 million plus.

    On this development, Ditto TV business head Manoj Padmanabhan said, “We chose Hull because they were ahead of the competition with their ability to offer a single interface to all customer interaction across every device, their quick turnaround, high availability, and rich feature set.”

    Hull was competing against many different solution providers including in-house development and bagged the partnership thanks to its affordable price, scalability, flexibility and rich feature set, making it the best choice to quickly build a large-scale unified user experience across all of Ditto TV’s platforms.

     

    “We are pleased to have Zee Entertainment utilizing our Hull connected consumer platform as a central hub that gathers all data into a unified user profile and enables multi-channel communication,” commented Hull president & CEO Stefan Koenig.

     

  • Ditto TV offers discounts during GOSF

    Ditto TV offers discounts during GOSF

    MUMBAI: This holiday season, Ditto TV will offer exclusive discounts through their alliance with Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF).  

    Ditto TV, India’s first OTT (Over-The-Top) TV distribution platform from Zee New Media, the digital arm of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL), hosts 150 channels across leading genres and rich on-demand video content globally. Today, the platform has over 5 million users.

     

    Through the GOSF association, Ditto TV will give subscribers a flat 70 per cent off on the yearly subscription pack of Rs 1099 which will be available for Rs 299 starting from 10 to 12 December 2014.

    To ease the payment system, Ditto TV will offer cash on delivery. Subscribers can also pay online through net banking using the promo code: GOSF299.

    The users will have access to its content library of over 150 live television channels and more than 10,000 hours of videos, TV shows and Bollywood movies.

    Ditto TV business head Manoj Padmanabhan said, “GOSF is one of the most popular online shopping festivals which draws the interests of a large number of people across the country. Through this association we are confident of gaining access to a wide user base, and a hitherto untapped audience for Ditto TV. Introducing them to LIVE TV and Video on Demand (VOD) through varied Internet enabled devices.”

    Ditto TV, which was set up in February 2012, has partnered for content with IndiaCast, Multi Screen Media (Sony Entertainment Television), Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd., TV Today Network, BBC, Turner India, Bikini TV, ZEE etc.

     

  • Ditto TV strengthens its news offering with Al Jazeera

    Ditto TV strengthens its news offering with Al Jazeera

    MUMBAI: Ditto TV, India’s first Over-The-Top (OTT) TV distribution platform, has further strengthened its international news channel offerings by partnering with Al Jazeera.  

     

    The Qatar-based news channel will be available to viewers across India and other regions.

     

    Ditto TV business head Manoj Padmanabhan said: “We have always focused on providing our users with diverse content from across the world. Viewers already had access to premium news channels like BBC World News, CNN International on Ditto TV and with this tie-up, we are looking to further strengthen our offerings in the news channel space. We are looking forward to cater to our premium audiences who want to stay connected with news across the globe.”

     

    Al Jazeera digital distribution manager Taahir Hoorzook added: “Consumers are increasingly looking at alternate screens for TV viewing and this partnership will help us bring our award winning and well acclaimed news content from around the world to viewers in India and around the world. It is an exciting opportunity for us and we are very bullish on this partnership with Ditto TV.”

     

  • Ditto TV adds Fox International HD channels

    Ditto TV adds Fox International HD channels

    MUMBAI: Zeel’s OTT distribution platform Ditto TV has partnered with Fox International Channels (India) to host three of its HD channels. Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo People and Baby TV will be available Live to Ditto TV viewers.

     

    The former two channels will have a range of wildlife and adventure shows that portray the culture and lifestyle of people from across the globe. Baby TV on the other hand will show content for kids and parents.

     

    Ditto TV business head Manoj Padmanabhan said, “Our partnership with Nat Geo will give the consumers access to high quality, exciting and entertaining content in HD. This is the first time HD channels streaming is being made available on an OTT platform. We hope to continue our efforts to provide the maximum value and a seamless viewing experience to our consumers.”

     

    Fox International Channels (India) distribution SVP Farhan Hoda commented, “We are very excited to partner with a premium service like Ditto TV for our content. The immense penetration of the internet and the growing number of internet-enabled mobile devices are stimulating demand and we believe this will transform into a very significant viewing platform in time. This partnership will enable us to showcase top quality content to our avid viewer base in India and the SAARC markets.”

     

    Currently Ditto TV has channels from IndiaCast, Multi Screen Media, Bennett Coleman and Co, TV Today Network, BBC, Turner India, Bikini TV, ZEE etc. It claims to have over four million users.