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Tag: Nitin Bawankule

  • Disney Star India head of ad sales Nitin Bawankule moves on

    Disney Star India head of ad sales Nitin Bawankule moves on

    Mumbai: Disney Star India head of ad sales Nitin Bawankule has decided to move on from the company, highly placed sources have confirmed to IndianTelevision.com on Thursday. He has been associated with the company since October 2019.

    At Disney Star India, Bawankule was responsible for ad sales for linear entertainment and sports channels and OTT platform Disney+ Hotstar.

    He was previously associated with Google as country director for Google Cloud in India. In a career spanning more than 27 years, Bawankule has been associated with companies such as Dell, Motorola India, Whirlpool India and Godrej Appliances.

    He is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

  • Disney+ Hotstar signs 13 sponsors for IPL 2022

    Disney+ Hotstar signs 13 sponsors for IPL 2022

    Mumbai: Streaming major Disney+ Hotstar has roped in 13 sponsors for the 15th edition of the Tata IPL 2022. Dream11 has come onboard as the ‘co-presenting’ sponsor, with Tata and Cred as the ‘co-powered by’ sponsors. Swiggy, Pristyn Care, Zepto, Ather Energy, Niyo, Parle Agro, Spotify, Livspace, L’Oreal and Spinny have been signed-on as associate sponsors.

    Tata IPL is scheduled to commence on 26 March and the tournament will be broadcast live on Disney+ Hotstar and the Star Sports Network.

    “In the next few weeks, the entire nation will be gripped by T20 fever with the commencement of Tata IPL,” said Disney Star head – ad sales Nitin Bawankule. “There is heightened interest from advertisers across categories for the upcoming season of Tata IPL owing to the addition of new teams and rejig in the pre-existing squads, thus an opportunity for them to reach out to a new set of audiences. The advertiser sentiment is extremely positive, all key features including Super 4s, Super 6s, Fall of Wickets and Milestones have sold out on our platform already. We look forward to delivering an impactful T20 season for our advertisers.”

    “Disney+ Hotstar presents brands with the opportunity to reach highly engaged, affluent audiences across India through its sharp targeting options on live sports, an industry first. The platform has a host of innovative advertising and branded content solutions for businesses to reach out to, engage with their audiences more effectively, and tell their brand stories on live cricket like never before,” said the statement.

  • Disney+ Hotstar launches LEAP program for agencies

    Disney+ Hotstar launches LEAP program for agencies

    Mumbai: Disney+ Hotstar has announced the launch of LEAP – An educational program for agency planners on advertising solutions and online video marketing on Disney+ Hotstar.

    Through this program, agencies will gain in-depth knowledge and expertise in planning and executing strategic digital campaigns. The first session of LEAP goes live on 25 November with team Dentsu India.

    From media to measurement, the two-day program will cover various aspects for agency planners on digital advertising and media planning and help them to understand how to leverage Disney+ Hotstar’s advertising solutions to maximise brand visibility, said the platform in a statement.

    “At Disney+ Hotstar, our constant endeavour is to equip advertisers and agencies with solutions that bring them closer to their customers and help them stand out in the industry,” said Star and Disney India head – ad sales Nitin Bawankule. “With the digital world evolving rapidly and online video marketing platforms playing an extremely important role in consumers’ lives, it is imperative to comprehensively understand the potential these platforms offer. Through LEAP, we aim to further strengthen our commitment towards the digital advertising ecosystem by equipping them with insights and knowledge that will help them maximise outcomes.”

  • upGrad teams up with Star Sports and Disney+ Hotstar for IPL ’21

    upGrad teams up with Star Sports and Disney+ Hotstar for IPL ’21

    Mumbai: Higher edtech brand upGrad has announced its association with Star Sports and Disney+ Hotstar for the second phase of the 14th edition of the Vivo Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021.

    The company is set to unveil its campaign on 19 September, which will run till 15 October in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada to connect with the wider audience, it said in a statement.

    “With the cricket frenzy setting in, we aim to launch our campaign during the tournament to develop a deeper connection with our pan-Indian audience and narrate the significance of outcome-oriented life-long learning as a means to achieve career growth and success,” said upGrad India CEO Arjun Mohan.

    “Vivo IPL has been a high-impact platform that sees unparalleled scale across both TV and digital screens,” said Star & Disney India head of ad sales Nitin Bawankule. “The reach, ratings and impressions are testimony to the power and impact that the property commands and it will be the biggest opportunity for marketers to leverage this upcoming festive season.”

  • Disney+ Hotstar collaborates with MediaMath

    Disney+ Hotstar collaborates with MediaMath

    MUMBAI: Disney+ Hotstar has collaborated with MediaMath to enable advertisers and agencies to measure reach and frequency on the OTT platform’s programmatic inventory in a trusted, and brand-safe environment.

    With this offering, brands can purchase premium inventory on Disney+ Hotstar through programmatic guaranteed (PG) and private marketplace (PMP) deals to reach India’s affluent, urban audiences via a multitude of ad formats that suit their marketing objectives. Disney+ Hotstar currently offers pre-roll and mid-roll ad formats on entertainment content and  pre-rolls on sports content for programmatic buying. The streaming platform also offers a wide range of targeting solutions with its audience solution.

    Disney+ Hotstar’s massive reach and sharp targeting options extend an incredible opportunity for brands, especially regional players, to tap the right audience whether on live sports or entertainment.

    Star & Disney India president Nitin Bawankule said, “We are committed to enabling marketers and agency partners to reach new and existing audiences at scale and build incremental reach. By activating audience-based buying in a private programmatic environment, brands can target precise, highly engaged audience cohorts, exercise more control with transparency, and attain higher visibility of their campaigns. MediaMath offers a cutting-edge technology platform and this association will help us offer efficient programmatic advertising solutions to clients.”

    “OTT is a critical and fast-growing channel for driving addressability, and our association with Disney+ Hotstar helps us offer a forward-looking, sophisticated programmatic setup,” MediaMath country manager Pranjal Desai said. “Disney+ Hotstar has already established itself as the largest AR4 player in the OTT space, and this collaboration has been the natural next step in making media buying on OTT a more streamlined, efficient and accountable process.”

    Swiggy director marketing Umesh Krishna said, "Swiggy and Disney+ Hotstar have had a long association, especially when it comes to cricket. In fact, food and video-on-demand are categories that go hand-in-hand, and they both cater to similar psychographics. Having tried out programmatic campaigns on the Disney+ Hotstar marketing platform recently, we are extremely pleased about the scale and targeting options that it offers us. I am confident that it can serve our various marketing goals effectively." 

    Interactive Avenues co-founder & CEO Amardeep Singh said, "We are looking forward to programmatically accessing India’s most premium and brand-safe video inventory on Disney+ Hotstar via MediaMath – the leading independent DSP in the country. This is an offering that the market has been waiting for quite some time now. Interactive Avenues works extensively with both MediaMath and Disney+ Hotstar and we are very excited for this offering which will help us to further augment our promise to our clients to give them the best ROI on their investments."

    Additionally, buyers can access other key features such as viewability measurement, frequency-capping, and real-time analytics. With Disney+ Hotstar, brands can reach India’s affluent, urban audiences via a multitude of ad formats that suit their marketing objectives. The platform’s massive reach and sharp targeting options extend an incredible opportunity for brands, especially regional players, to reach the right audience whether on live sports or entertainment.

  • Nitin Bawankule to join as Star India head of ad sales from 1 October

    Nitin Bawankule to join as Star India head of ad sales from 1 October

    MUMBAI: Star India, today announced the appointment of Nitin Bawankule as the head of ad sales. In this role, Bawankule will be responsible for leading ad sales across both linear broadcast and OTT for Star TV network and Hotstar respectively. This appointment is effective 1 October 2019 and will report to Star and Disney India country manager Sanjay Gupta.

    “The media and entertainment industry is poised for rapid growth and our viewership continues to reach newer heights. With Nitin’s proficiency in growing teams and scaling businesses, his prowess in building long-term partnerships, and his mastery of the consumer internet space, I am confident that he will play a pivotal role in shaping and driving our ambitious growth strategy in the years to come,” said Sanjay Gupta.

    “Star is a great brand and has played a lead role in transforming the media and entertainment industry in India. It’s truly an honour to be a part of such an exceptional organization and I look forward to all the great things we will accomplish together,” said Nitin Bawankule.

    Bawankule has over two decades of experience in global sales, building large businesses and expanding into new markets. His expertise includes scaling sales organisations, establishing strategic partnerships and helping build long-lasting relationships with some of the biggest global internet and consumer brands.

    Prior to joining Star, Bawankule worked with Google for over eight years. In his last role, as the Country Director for Google Cloud India, he spearheaded the exponential growth of Cloud adoption in the country. In addition, Bawankule has led the Google Ads business as Industry Director. Prior to joining Google, Bawankule worked with Dell as a Director, where he handled multiple sales and business roles.

    Bawankule holds a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) in Marketing and Finance from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and Bachelor of Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology.

  • Star India appoints Nitin Bawankule as head of ad sales

    Star India appoints Nitin Bawankule as head of ad sales

    MUMBAI: Google country director – India Nitin Bawankule will be joining Star India as head of ad sales from October. Bawankule has around 25 years of experience combining digital, IT, telecom and consumer electronic space.

    A source has confirmed the appointment of Bawankule in Star India to Indiantelevision.com. Prior to his role as country director – India, he was the industry director leading the E-commerce (online retail) and online classifieds (local, real estate, jobs and matrimonial), technology, education and government verticals at Google India.

    Earlier, he has been the director in Dell for Asia Pacific Japan region managing software and peripherals portfolio. His earlier roles include regional sales manager at Motorola and sales manager at Whirlpool and Godrej-GE Appliances.

    He has done Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Bangalore and has a Bachelor of Engineering (B.E) in Electronics from VNIT Nagpur.

  • Google helps Big Bazaar drive customers

    Google helps Big Bazaar drive customers

    MUMBAI: Big Bazaar, one of the leading hypermarket chains in India with a presence in over 120 cities with 225 stores, has worked closely with Google to create ‘Smart Search.’

    Big Bazaar realised that their customers seek solution to every query on Google Search and wanted to position the brand as the solution to every household product query. The challenge was to add newer segment young customers who seek offers and information online and drive them to the stores.

    Ignition Labs, Google India’s creative solution team, conceptualised and helped execute the campaign, which led to Big Bazaar giving exclusive offers to Google search users for one day in the first weekend of each month, when the propensity to spend is higher.

    Over 1,80,000 discount coupons were distributed against each Google search in three days, which saw an increase of more than 30,000 people visiting the Big Bazaar stores.

    Future Group group head – digital Pawan Sarda says, “Search and explore is a way of life in today’s time and Google Search is one of the important destination for it. Smart Search has helped us translate the customer’s intent into a purchase at our stores and has definitely helped us acquire newer & younger customers.”

    Google India industry director Nitin Bawankule said, “Big Bazaar and Google came together to conceptualise this innovative campaign, ultimately driving trackable offline footfalls and sales.”

    Further it used innovative features like Click to Missed-Call for a seamless experience of delivering coupons, instead of filling long forms. This reduced the lead generation process from filling a form to a simple missed call.

  • Online shopper base in India to reach 100 million by 2016

    Online shopper base in India to reach 100 million by 2016

    MUMBAI: Convenience and variety is what today’s shoppers look for. And the platform giving them these both is e-commerce.

     

    As per Google in its annual online shopping growth trends report, consumer confidence to shop online will only continue to rise and India will have 100 million online shoppers by 2016.

     

    The report compiled by combining an extensive research conducted by Forrester Consulting and Google search trends revealed that India’s e-tailing market is at an inflection point and will see rapid growth to become a $15 billion market by 2016.

     

    The research conducted by Forrester Consulting by interviewing 6859 respondents covering both online buyers and non-buyers in 50 cities/towns, found out that online shoppers base will grow three times by 2016, and over 50 million new buyers will come from tier I and II cities.  The confidence to shop online was on the rise as 71 per cent non-buyers from tier I and II cities said they plan to shop online in next 12 months. The findings also revealed that women buyers in tier I cities were more engaged in online shopping, and outspend men by double. Women were also responsible for driving growth in categories like apparels, beauty & skincare, home furnishing, baby products and jewellery.

     

    Over 60 per cent respondents also felt that buying online was directly correlated with social status. Mobile phones emerged as an important access device for online shoppers with one out of three online buyers transacting on their mobile phones in tier I and II cities. In tier III cities, one in two buyers said they use mobile phones to purchase products online. This was also reflected in Google search trends with mobile phones queries growing three times in last three years. Today, over 50 per cent of shopping queries were coming from mobile phones; this share was as low as 24 per cent just two years back.

     

    Google India local and classified ecommerce industry director Nitin Bawankule said, “The consumer confidence to shop online has grown significantly in  last year and a half, and our objective was to understand the factors that are driving this growth and arrive at indicators that will help propel the Industry forward. As the report indicates, behavior of Indian online buyer is fast mirroring buyers in more developed markets as more subjective product categories have started to see significant growth. The e-tailing Industry needs to act now to cater to this strong user growth trend. Improved customer experience across all touch points, easy to use mobile apps can create a strong pull for non-buyers to shop online in tier I and II cities. Women buyers are set to become the most significant contributor to the growth of online shopping and there is a huge opportunity waiting to be unlocked in this user segment.”

     

    Amongst the challenges, 62 per cent buyers said they were not satisfied with their online shopping experience. 67 per cent buyers also highlighted that the current return process was too complicated and expensive. Trust was a major issue with non buyers, 55 per cent non buyers did not trust the quality of products sold online, 63 per cent said they were concerned about the safety of transacting online and 65 per cent said, they don’t feel comfortable sharing personally identifiable information online. 66 per cent of total respondents said that poor connectivity was also a major barrier for them to shop online.