ITV

Tag: MTS

  • Prasun Kumar elevated to chief marketing officer at Magicbricks

    Prasun Kumar elevated to chief marketing officer at Magicbricks

    Mumbai: Prasun Kumar, who was previously business head – New Revenue Verticals & Head – Operations, Digital Marketing & Quality Assurance at Magicbricks has been promoted to chief of marketing at the leading real estate portal.

    In this new capacity, Prasun will oversee the company’s entire marketing, research, and editorial functions. Additionally, he will also be Business Head for a few strategic revenue verticals.

    Before rejoining Magicbricks in 2023, Prasun held the position of chief marketing officer at Justdial. His professional journey, spanning over two decades, includes leadership roles at renowned organisations such as Reliance Communications, Sony Mobile Communications, MTS, Levi Strauss & Co., Madison Communications, and McCann Worldgroup.

  • Pallavi Patil rejoins Madison Media as VP – insights & strategy

    Pallavi Patil rejoins Madison Media as VP – insights & strategy

    Mumbai: Madison Media, a unit of Madison World, is delighted to announce the return of Pallavi Patil as vice president – Insights & Strategy. In her new role, Pallavi will report to Madison Media & OOH group CEO Vikram Sakhuja.

    With over 19 years of experience in data science, insights, and strategic planning, Pallavi brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise. She previously spent six years at Madison and has also worked with leading companies such as Kinetic Worldwide, Nielsen, and Kantar TNS. Before rejoining Madison, Pallavi was associated with Dentsu – Posterscope. Her impressive portfolio includes handling renowned brands like Heinz, UTI Mutual Fund, Citibank, Vodafone Idea, MTS, Cadbury, Tata Motors, Audi, Levi’s, Samsung, Diageo and Google.

    Madison Media & OOH group CEO Vikram Sakhuja said, “We are thrilled to welcome Pallavi back to the Madison family. Her extensive experience and strategic expertise will be instrumental in driving innovation and delivering exceptional value to our clients.”

    Pallavi remarked, “I am excited to rejoin Madison Media and look forward to contributing to our clients’ growth and success through data-driven strategies and insights. It feels wonderful to be back and collaborate with such a talented and dedicated team.

    In the past year, Madison Media has seen a remarkable trend with nearly 50 ex-Madisonites rejoining the company. This surge of returning talent reflects Madison’s nurturing work culture, strong leadership, and exciting opportunities for professional growth. The agency’s ability to attract back former employees speaks volumes about the positive experiences and impactful work environment Madison provides.

  • IPL 2017: The Piracy Conundrum

    MUMBAI: That the Indian Premier League has become one of the most valuable sports properties globally is a well-documented fact. The audience in India stays glued to its sets late into the night watching action between the various teams. Ditto with the audience in the UK, US, West Indies, Australia (where matches are watched in the wee hours of the morning).

    And, even though the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has assigned the telecast rights for fat sums to broadcasters and streaming platforms in India and almost every major nation, the fact remains that piracy continues to dog the telecast of the IPL as well as most other major sport tournaments.

    Anti-piracy UK-based company Friends MTS kept a tab on the first weekend (7-9 April) of the ongoing IPL 2017 tournament. And, alarmingly, it discovered that more than 1,700 unique URLs were telecasting IPL — illegally. It also detected more than 211 unique servers, 122 pirate streams, 51 hosting sites,  and 23 infrastructure providers serving the 1,700 unique URLs.

    To top it all, while one of the streams was delivering at 1080p, at least 16 of them were being delivered at 720p and 37 of them at 360p. While the first two could offer a near-HD experience on HD sets, the 360p streams could have been watched on tablets, phones and even SD sets comfortably.

    Amongst the top infringing sites that turned up in the Friends MTS test trace: cast4u.tv, jazztv.co,  04stream.com,  darksideiptv.com, 80.82.77.77, 89.248.168.91,  51.255.74.170, aliez-player.gcdn.co,  fblive-a.akamaihd.net,  globiptv.com,  lightspeed.sytes.net , root-iptv.is-found.org, tv2iptv.com and webtv.ws.

    Friends MTS executive vice-president global sales and marketing Paul Hastings says that piracy is bleeding the legitimate pay TV industry which has coughed up top dollar for the IPL rights. “These folks who are watching the IPL streams online on illegal sites or on IPTV platforms are avoiding paying the subscription fees to those who are telecasting legitimately. And this incidence is only rising,” says he.

    His company has been working with satellite platform Sky in the UK and has embedded its ASiD security solution in nearly 10 million STBs.  ASiD uses a sophisticated but lightweight watermarking technology, coupled with Friends MTS’ global monitoring platform, to identify originating subscriber accounts that are being used to retransmit live channels and events.  The technology can be implemented without any changes to the video delivery infrastructure, and enables accounts to be identified and video access blocked within just minutes.

    According to Paul, with sporting rights costs escalating, sports associations and bodies and broadcasters will perforce have to keep a strict watch on economic leakages by pirates in order to get the true value for the content.

    Points out pay TV technology firm Castle Media executive director Vynsley Fernandes: “Finding potential illegal streams on the internet has been the crusade of most CAS/DRM providers and, with advanced techniques in forensic watermarking services, which can identify the source of an illegal stream in under five minutes, it is now being perfected to a fine art. Though, there are no absolute safeguards against a potential illegal streamer posting stream URLs on the internet, there are now excellent ones in finding the offender.”

    Fernandes is assisting MTS Friends as it looks at providing security solutions to India’s bubbling with potential pay TV and streaming services segment.

    “Pay TV, streaming and telco (via video) ARPUs in India can go up if piracy is checked,” says he. “If platforms and broadcasters realize more revenues they will be more open to paying higher fees to acquire rights for the various sports – like cricket, football, kabaddi –  that have established themselves  in the country as well as new sports that are emerging. It will lead to the development of a healthy sports broadcast and overall sports ecosystem.”

    Says a media observer: “In India, Sony Pictures Networks’ India is celebrating its 10th and possibly final year of telecasting the IPL as the new auctioning process for the next five years is on the anvil. Additionally, Hotstar.com has the digital streaming rights. Whoever bags the rights when the bidding ends later this year, will have to ensure every revenue leakage is blocked as the tussle to acquire the IPL is going to send prices to stratospheric heights never seen before. My bet is that the IPL could end up being the most valuable televised sports property ever.”

    Says another tech consultant: “Monetisation is going to be crucial. Hence, the BCCI, the new rights owners and platforms will have to keep a track and block every pirated signal. In India, a lot of the viewing is going to be on the mobile, and that is where a low-pixel signal — from a pirate — can be watched reasonably clearly.”

    As they say, when the stakes are high, you cannot afford to leave any corner uncovered.

    Also Read

    FICCI FRAMES: Legitimate screens, stricter laws, best practices for IPR

    FICCI Frames ’17: Maharashtra to form IP crime unit to fight online piracy

    Film piracy: Govt has no ‘losses’ figure, industry estimates Rs 180 bn a yr

    ‘Make piracy an economic offence, good cos ‘badvertise’ too’

  • Friend MTS-Castle Media to tackle Bollywood’s digital piracy using unique watermark tech

    Friend MTS-Castle Media to tackle Bollywood’s digital piracy using unique watermark tech

    MUMBAI: Piracy is a serious challenge to the entertainment industry in India. In fact, according to the Motion Pictures Distributors Association of India (MPDA), India country is infamous for having one of the highest rate of video piracy in the world. Lack of stringent IP protection laws to counter exponential growth of online piracy has made matters worse. In 2008 alone, the industry lost close to USD 4 billion (Rs 27,000 crore) to piracy, going by Ernst & Young estimates. By 2016, the figure may have doubled by conservative extrapolation.

    Birmingham-based content protection service Friend MTS sees a business opportunity in bringing back this large sum of non-monetised revenue back to the content-owners in India. Friend MTS is leading a delegation to India that will investigate the escalating problem of digital piracy.

    “As pioneers in the creation and provision of content protection services, already used by many of the world’s Pay-TV operators, rights holders and broadcasters, we want to engage with the country’s movie producers and work with them to effectively fight the increasing threat to the revenue of premium channels and rights holders,” said Friend MTS’ global sales & marketing EVP Paul Hastings.

    Friend MTS has already established the company’s base in Chennai, with Rahul Nehra overseeing its India operations. He works with India’s film studios, broadcasters and content owners to help protect them from unauthorised redistribution of their live and premium on-demand content.

    Film producers and content rights owners such as Kollywood’s Venkat Prabhu is excited “at the prospects of having FMTS track and contain on-line piracy” and are hopeful this will give them a significant upside in local and global revenues. Tamil Film Producers Council secretary T Siva, a film producer at Amma Creation, said, “The industry welcomes these initiatives on digital anti-piracy.” Friend MTS had already helped secure Bollywood movies like Baahubali and Pink against piracy.

    India is the biggest film producer in the world making between 1500 and 2000 movies each year, including the cult Bollywood movies.

    “By teaming up with our local partner, Rahul Nehra, a well-known face in the Indian broadcast, satellite, content and OTT markets, and growth consultants from Frost Sullivan, the event and our delegation will be an unprecedented forum for discussing India’s spiraling digital piracy problems and how together we can work to stop it,” Hastings shared.

    To help the international player understand the complex Indian media ecosystem, it has made an alliance with Castle Media. To guide its penetration in the southern market, it is relying on Novacom. Friend MTS’s flagship service titled ‘Studio’ is designed to identify instances of pirated movies on the internet, and is being used by some of the largest content-owners in the world.

    In 2012 India was added to an ‘International Piracy Watch List’ by a U.S. government panel looking to highlight countries not taking sufficient action to address high rates of digital piracy. According to a 2013 article in WIPO Magazine (the journal of the World Intellectual Property Organization), the Indian film industry loses around US$3.34 billion and some 60,000 jobs every year because of piracy.

    Identifying each copyright violator by generating unique watermark within the content for each user is what Hastings calls is the technology’s USP. “It uses a sophisticated but lightweight fingerprinting technology, coupled with our global monitoring platform and network forensics, to identify and enforce against websites and apps that are being used deliver illegal content,” he added.

    In India Friend MTS is already operational for a leading broadcaster, and in talks with pay TV platforms, OTT service providers, and content makers, to ensure it catches up to its vibrant international clientele. “We deliver digital anti-piracy services for a wide range of customers including content owners such as Viacom and Paramount, sports rights holders such as the English Premier League, Serie A (Italian Football League), UFC, WWE, the International Olympic Committee and leading Hollywood studios. We also protect tier one pay-TV operators such as Sky, BT, nc+ (Poland) and OTE (Greece) delivered via satellite, cable and OTT,” Hastings added in parting.

  • Friend MTS-Castle Media to tackle Bollywood’s digital piracy using unique watermark tech

    Friend MTS-Castle Media to tackle Bollywood’s digital piracy using unique watermark tech

    MUMBAI: Piracy is a serious challenge to the entertainment industry in India. In fact, according to the Motion Pictures Distributors Association of India (MPDA), India country is infamous for having one of the highest rate of video piracy in the world. Lack of stringent IP protection laws to counter exponential growth of online piracy has made matters worse. In 2008 alone, the industry lost close to USD 4 billion (Rs 27,000 crore) to piracy, going by Ernst & Young estimates. By 2016, the figure may have doubled by conservative extrapolation.

    Birmingham-based content protection service Friend MTS sees a business opportunity in bringing back this large sum of non-monetised revenue back to the content-owners in India. Friend MTS is leading a delegation to India that will investigate the escalating problem of digital piracy.

    “As pioneers in the creation and provision of content protection services, already used by many of the world’s Pay-TV operators, rights holders and broadcasters, we want to engage with the country’s movie producers and work with them to effectively fight the increasing threat to the revenue of premium channels and rights holders,” said Friend MTS’ global sales & marketing EVP Paul Hastings.

    Friend MTS has already established the company’s base in Chennai, with Rahul Nehra overseeing its India operations. He works with India’s film studios, broadcasters and content owners to help protect them from unauthorised redistribution of their live and premium on-demand content.

    Film producers and content rights owners such as Kollywood’s Venkat Prabhu is excited “at the prospects of having FMTS track and contain on-line piracy” and are hopeful this will give them a significant upside in local and global revenues. Tamil Film Producers Council secretary T Siva, a film producer at Amma Creation, said, “The industry welcomes these initiatives on digital anti-piracy.” Friend MTS had already helped secure Bollywood movies like Baahubali and Pink against piracy.

    India is the biggest film producer in the world making between 1500 and 2000 movies each year, including the cult Bollywood movies.

    “By teaming up with our local partner, Rahul Nehra, a well-known face in the Indian broadcast, satellite, content and OTT markets, and growth consultants from Frost Sullivan, the event and our delegation will be an unprecedented forum for discussing India’s spiraling digital piracy problems and how together we can work to stop it,” Hastings shared.

    To help the international player understand the complex Indian media ecosystem, it has made an alliance with Castle Media. To guide its penetration in the southern market, it is relying on Novacom. Friend MTS’s flagship service titled ‘Studio’ is designed to identify instances of pirated movies on the internet, and is being used by some of the largest content-owners in the world.

    In 2012 India was added to an ‘International Piracy Watch List’ by a U.S. government panel looking to highlight countries not taking sufficient action to address high rates of digital piracy. According to a 2013 article in WIPO Magazine (the journal of the World Intellectual Property Organization), the Indian film industry loses around US$3.34 billion and some 60,000 jobs every year because of piracy.

    Identifying each copyright violator by generating unique watermark within the content for each user is what Hastings calls is the technology’s USP. “It uses a sophisticated but lightweight fingerprinting technology, coupled with our global monitoring platform and network forensics, to identify and enforce against websites and apps that are being used deliver illegal content,” he added.

    In India Friend MTS is already operational for a leading broadcaster, and in talks with pay TV platforms, OTT service providers, and content makers, to ensure it catches up to its vibrant international clientele. “We deliver digital anti-piracy services for a wide range of customers including content owners such as Viacom and Paramount, sports rights holders such as the English Premier League, Serie A (Italian Football League), UFC, WWE, the International Olympic Committee and leading Hollywood studios. We also protect tier one pay-TV operators such as Sky, BT, nc+ (Poland) and OTE (Greece) delivered via satellite, cable and OTT,” Hastings added in parting.

  • Reliance Communications in talks with Aircel to merge wireless biz

    Reliance Communications in talks with Aircel to merge wireless biz

    MUMBAI: Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications (RCOM) has entered into a 90-day exclusivity period with Maxis Communications Berhad (MCB) and Sindya Securities and Investments, the shareholders of Aircel Limited, to consider the potential combination of their Indian wireless business.

     

    The merger of RCOM and Aircel’s wireless business will mutually derive the expected substantial benefits of in country consolidation, including opex and capex synergies and revenue enhancement.

     

    The potential combination will exclude RCOM’s towers and optical fibre infrastructure, for which RCOM is proceeding with an asset sale, as announced on 4 December, 2015.

     

    RCOM said that the discussions are non-binding in nature and any transaction will be subject to due diligence, definitive documentation and regulatory, shareholders’ and other third party approvals. Hence, there is no certainty that any transaction will result.

     

    It may be recalled that RCOM recently entered into a merger deal with MTS.

  • Twitter India appoints Anupam Dixit as its first industry manager

    Twitter India appoints Anupam Dixit as its first industry manager

    MUMBAI: Twitter India has appointed Anupam Dixit as its first industry manager in the country. The official handle of Twitter India (@TwitterIndia) tweeted out the following announcing his appointment.

     

    As Twitter’s first industry manager in India, Dixit is responsible for providing support for Indian advertising campaigns leveraging the company’s platform for live, public conversations, while working with industry-leading marketers to increase engagement with their customers on Twitter.

     

    Dixit has eight years of digital marketing experience and has had a front row seat to the evolution of the medium in India. In his last role, he was MTS digital marketing and ecommerce head, where he worked on the MTS internet baby campaign, which is now the most viewed brand commercial on YouTube among other award winning digital innovations.

     

    Prior to MTS, he launched Blyk, a youth mobile messaging media platform, India; besides starting his first digital venture EveryMedia. 

  • MTS Launches #IndiaForShiva movement on social media

    MTS Launches #IndiaForShiva movement on social media

    MUMBAI: Sistema Shyam TeleServices Ltd. (SSTL), that provides telecom services under the MTS brand has launched a movement on social media to bring all countrymen together to support Shiva Keshavan – Olympian from India who is set to compete in “Luge” at the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. MTS has been actively supporting Shiva Keshavan in his quest for Gold. Given that Shiva Keshavan would be competing at Sochi as a ‘Citizen Olympian’ under the Olympics flag in place of the Indian Tricolour; the IndiaForShiva campaign has been rolled out as a show of support for the champion luger.

    According to Leonid Musatov, Chief Marketing & Sales Officer – MTS India, “MTS as a brand has always believed in providing a platform to talented youngsters, who bet on themselves, challenge reality and don’t let the present come in way of their future. We have been consistently supporting Shiva Keshavan for the last two years in his journey to the Sochi Olympics. We have always believed in Shiva and his dedication to the sport of Luge, despite the sport not being as popular as some of the other sports in the country. Now, when the chance to win the Olympic medal is so close, it is time that we all stand behind Shiva and cheer for him”.

    The IndiaForShiva campaign by MTS India is an extensive social media movement to generate support and wishes for Shiva Keshavan. The campaign would encompass specially designed twitter feeds, engagement activities on Facebook and other social media channels.

    MTS Brand Ambassador and Winter Olympian, Shiva Keshavan said “As an athlete, winning an Olympic Gold medal is my biggest dream. I am looking forward to the Winter Olympics in Sochi and hopefully this would be my chance to bring the medal home. I would like to thank MTS India and all my fans for supporting me through the IndiaForShiva campaign. It is heartening to see my countrymen getting aware about the sport of Luge and cheering for me as I get set to compete on 8th and 9th February 2014”.

     

  • Havas Media Group strengthens team with three appointments

    Havas Media Group strengthens team with three appointments

    MUMBAI: Havas Media Group India has made some senior management appointments in keeping with its growth pace and new business acquisitions since the beginning of 2013.

    In the light of the recently acquired LG business, the Havas Media Arena team has been strengthened with two key appointments. Love Guglani joins as vice president and Saurabh Bhatnagar joins as group account director-Digital. Their main mandate is to manage the LG business in keeping with the philosophy of being Digital at the core.

    Besides this, Havas Media Delhi has appointed Roopali Sharma as vice president, to manage key clients like MTS which are on their growth phase.

    Commenting on the appointments Havas Media Group India and south Asia CEO Anita Nayyar said, “Our growth strategy needs the right people. All three have had illustrious careers and collectively bring in huge wealth of knowledge and experience.”

    Love who has more than 12 years of experience across media agencies said, “Havas is looking at an aggressive growth path in India so I am glad to be here. I have worked with Anita Nayyar in the past – her passion and support is a fantastic proposition to drive a business, in addition to the working wavelength we share. My mandate presents opportunities and challenges. I look forward to giving brands, global or local a meaningful voice to further their business plans in India,” on his new role.

    “Havas is a great opportunity and I am thrilled to be associated with great minds. I look forward to institute a richer, multi level digital experience for the clients and create new business associations in India. The expectations and challenges are big and I consider them as motivators to achieve greater results and growth”, said Saurabh Bhatnagar who comes with rich experience of 12+ years, most of which have been with digital.

    On the move, Roopali said, “I look forward to an exciting and enriching career at Havas. My role and responsibility is to further strengthen our quality of work and lead the clients to more strategic directions helping them achieve their business goals. I look forward to working in this exciting and inspiring work place under the inspiring and always motivated leadership”. She has over 13 years of experience which spans across strategy, planning and buying.

  • Adwallz adds six new accounts to its portfolio

    Mumbai: Adwallz, an organised wall painting advertising solution agency, has recently bagged six new accounts taking the total number of clients to nearly 50.

    The newly-added clients include banking company HDFC Bank, electronic company Philips, global chemicals company Huntsman Corporation, insurance company Bajaj Allianz and mobile service providers MTS and Vodafone.

    The agency will execute the ‘Jeevan Bima and Sales‘ campaign for Bajaj Allianz in Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Punjab.

    Meanwhile, it will work on ‘Gold Loan‘, ‘Current a/c, saving a/c‘ campaigns for HDFC in Andhra Pradesh and Orrisa.

    For Huntsman Corp, Adwallaz will take charge of the Karpenter and Araldite brand across India and for Philips it will look after CFL and TL in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

    For MTS and Vodafone, the agency will take charge of branding in Maharashtra and Bangalore respectively.

    Adwallz founder and CEO Mihir Mody said, “This quarter has been very significant for Adwallz in terms of new accounts. We are happy to be associated with these brands that are well established in their respective industry. Being associated with such big corporations gives us an opportunity to exhibit our creativity and innovation. Our endeavor is to deliver the best in terms of creativity and create a unique advertising experience for the target audience of the brands.”

    The company that came into existence in 2004 won the newly added accounts in the last one month. The execution for these campaigns has started from the first week of October. At present, Adwallz has corporate giants like HUL, Colgate, Marico, Godrej and Wipro amongst many in its current portfolio.