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  • Franchise India 2013 Asias largest Franchise & retail show

    Franchise India 2013 Asias largest Franchise & retail show

    NEW DELHI : Franchise India 2013, the 11th edition of Asia’s Biggest Franchise & Retail Opportunity Show is to be held on 19th & 20th October, Pragati Maidan New Delhi. The show will provide a platform for highly evolved prospects, top notch Education businesses and entrepreneurs from across India, neighboring countries and delegations from the other parts of the world to meet face-face with some of the most accomplished Business Ideas, attend unparalleled business summits and seminars and learn more about India and fast growing MSME industry in India. Franchise India 2013 is presented by Asia’s largest integrated franchise and retail solutions company, Franchise India, with the support of Indian Franchise Association.

    Some well prominent Education brands are participating like Sesame Street Pre-School. Planet Kids, San Fort, Kids Gurukul, and many more.

    Mr. Gaurav Marya, Chairman, Franchise India said ” The education industry is an $80billion industry growing at 13 percent. An average Indian household spends as much as 10prcent of its discretionary income on education, while american and asian households spends 2 percent and 7 percent respectively, therefore it becomes imperative that educational institutes live up to their image of providing lifelong learning. The upcoming Franchise show will bring along 100s of business opportunities of national as well as international brands.”

     
    Spanning over two days, the show will comprise of a comprehensive Exhibition covering all the industries extensively with massive domestic and international participation, informative and enlightening Conference & Workshops with prominent international and national speakers to impart knowledge and the highly prestigious Franchise Awards 2013 and Star Retailer Awards, to recognize the excellence in franchise & retail industries. Mr. Gaurav Marya, Chairman,  Franchise India said “Franchise India 2013 will bring new opportunities, new trends, new faces and new lateral thinking for the business fraternity. The exhibition will be a window into the future, presenting opportunities that radars on the direction of tomorrow’s consumer demand. The conference will be the greatest source of ideas for businesses; some that don’t even exist yet and yet have a huge built in growing demand”.

     
    The show displays Indian and global brands and is an “Opportunity Show” for liasoning with brands to offer a pool of out-of-box business ideas and practices delivering India’s biggest business exchange for Education sector.

    The exhibition also features, Franchise Talk, an open forum conceptualized by Indian Franchise Association to enhance the brand recognition. It’s a podium for a franchisor to present his business as an engrossing opportunity, to express his insight for 20 minutes & influence the prospective franchisees. The Exhibition clearly puts forth a spectrum of opportunities in franchising, retailing, licensing, real estate and retail supply from all possible industry verticals. The show not only features dedicated industry pavilions for focused business positioning but also boasts of an exclusive international pavilion showcasing enormous opportunities from countries like UAE & Middle East, USA, Cyprus, France, Russia, Singapore and UK.

    Attracting over 25000 serious business visitors, the show is highly successful for all its participants. Gleamed with top business opportunities, the show promises an insightful view of franchise options in varied investment range. This show recognizes this platform as a trusted launch pad for them to showcase their brand or opportunity to discover the serious business investors or potential partners. Franchise India 2013 Delhi Show will comprise over 500 national and International companies for doing business in India.

  • Star gears up for MIPCOM

    Star gears up for MIPCOM

    MIPCOM is where the ‘stars’ align for business. And so it is that Star India will be participating for the eighth consecutive time at MIPCOM this year, armed to its teeth with content including Hindi and regional programs.

    There’s no undermining how important MIPCOM is, even for an established entity such as Star India, whose programs have takers not only in India but all over the world. Star India vice president Ashutosh Mordekar puts it well saying: “MIPCOM is the biggest aggregation of content buyers and sellers across the globe. It provides a platform to showcase our content to buyers across the world.”

    Ashutosh Mordekar believes the market provides an opportunity to meet and transact with new as well as existing clients

    Mordekar also believes the market provides an opportunity to meet and transact with new as well as existing clients.

    Star will be focussing on markets like Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and CIS region and Central Asia.

    Coming to what’s new from the Star stable, Mordekar says: “Star is showcasing the epic Mahabharat which is the most expensive show coming from India. The show is already garnering interest across Asia and Europe, and buyers have already indicated their interest.”

    Explaining why Indian content is very well accepted in global markets, he reasons: “The world is currently opening up to Indian content in a big way. Indian content is at present just breaking out. We are at the end of stage one, where the content has been sampled in various countries through initial foothold deals and the success of these shows has created a huge interest in fresh content coming from India.”

    While it is generally felt that the production value of Indian content has gone up in recent times, is it really up-to-speed with international standards? “Yes! The last couple of years have seen a huge leap in the production value of our shows. Be it HD, Dolby 5.1 Sound etc. – the production values today are comparable to the best in the world,” quips Mordekar.

    About the platforms the network plans to target at MIPCOM, he says: “We are going to be in discussions for exploiting our content on IPTV, mobile, VOD (Voice on demand) or free-to-air platforms.”

    Optimistic about the results of participation, Mordekar is looking forward to this year’s fest.

  • From Russia with love

    From Russia with love

    MUMBAI: As the second largest television market in the world which is only expanding with each passing year, India has witnessed a steady inflow of international channels in recent times.

    As purveyor of all things TV, indiantelevision.com, today kicks-off a brand new series which profiles all such channels aiming to bring a more global, all-round perspective to Indian drawing rooms.

    We debut with the Russian news channel Russia Today (RT), which arrived on Indian shores in 2009, courtesy a deal with GlobeCast.

    The first channel to report live from the North Pole, RT’s maiden broadcast was on 10 December 2005. Two years later, its Arabic counterpart Rusiya Al-Yaum was launched. Following suit were: RT en Espanol (Spanish) in 2009, RT America in 2010 and RT Documentary in 2011.

    Having made its mark internationally, RT proceeded to test Indian waters in 2009 as part of its endeavour to expand its Asian footprint.

    Back then, it was available for viewing in around seven million homes. Today, it boasts a reach of 60 million subscribers with a viewership of about 300 million.

    Three satellites carry RT for viewers in India: Measat 3a, Insat 4B and AsiaSat 3S. Denizens of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Hyderabad can watch RT on their cable network and major satellite platforms across the rest of the country.
        
    On the day it was launched, RT was available for viewing only on WWIL, Dish Hits, InCable, 7 Star (cable operators), Big TV and Sun Direct DTH platforms.

    Today, it is also available on InCable Net, Hathway (cable operators), Dish TV, DD Direct Plus and Airtel DTH.

    However, it is highly unlikely that RT is making any money out of its distribution in the country. In fact it is highly probably that it is digging deep into its pockets to pay carriage fees to the cable and DTH operators. “In the case of DD Direct Plus it could be paying anywhere between Rs 1.5 to Rs 2.5 crore as carriage fees per year while on private DTH operators it could go up to Rs 5 crore per annum,” says a senior media consultant.

    With a tagline that reads ‘Question More’, who does RT cater to in India? While the country is home to a sizeable Russian population – either expats or regular tourists, RT claims it does not necessarily cater to the Russian diaspora but to ‘anybody who can speak English’.

    What do viewers get to watch on RT? Says RT MD Alexey Nikolov: “RT covers major international stories and significant regional developments in politics, society and finance for viewers of all backgrounds and nationalities.”

    Regular RT viewers observe that the channel discusses all major political issues and current affairs, albeit with a Russian perspective. While the news caters to a global audience, there’s some amount of India-specific content too. Of late, the coverage has included the Delhi gang rape, India being awarded permanent observer status in the Arctic Council, defence contracts with Russia, Indo-China military cooperation and potential expansion of major foreign multi-brand retailers in India.

    More specifically, some of the popular shows on RT include ‘Cross Talk’, ‘The Kieser Report’, ‘Breaking the Set’, ‘The Big Picture’ and ‘Larry King Live’ hosted by Larry King who switched from CNN to RT with this show. “What makes RT stand out among other news channels is that we cover stories that most other media outlets either ignore or dismiss, or on which, they provide a one-sided take,” exults Nikolov.

    As things stand, RT does not have any bureau in India to cover news from here. While it works with a number of stringers across the country, when asked, it was unwilling to share the exact number with indiantelevision.com.

    However, in April this year, RT did launch their own video news agency named Ruptly, which works with various stringers and videographers across the globe. Earlier on, the channel also had a dedicated correspondent named Priya Sridhar, who would report about happenings in India. She has now moved on.

    A huge list of hotels show RT on their screens, including the Taj Mahal, The Leela, Hyatt, Marriot, The Lalit and others. Hotels are keen to carry international channels because of the diverse visitors they attract from foreign countries. Although it is available in HD (high definition), as of now, it is limited to the SD format.

    On Airtel DTH (Direct to Home), RT is available a la carte for Rs 5 while on Big TV, the rate is Rs 20. Sun DTH and Dish TV air the channel only in packs, along with other English news channels, while DD Direct Plus is the only channel which offers it free.

  • DD commences e-auction of six slots for its DTH Platform

    DD commences e-auction of six slots for its DTH Platform

    NEW DELHI: In an effort to reach its target of 97 channels by the end of this year, Prasar Bharati is auctioning six slots on its free-to-air direct-to-home platform DD Direct Plus by e-auction.

    A Bangalore based private firm – Synise Technologies – has been chosen to conduct the e-auction which commenced yesterday.

    It is also learnt that Prasar Bharati is considering carrying out a change in its policy to try and get the best of channels on its DTH service.

    Currently, Doordarshan’s DTH platform offers 59 channels of which 30 are private, 21 of DD, Lok Sabha TV, Rajya Sabha TV and two channels run by the UGC.

    Four foreign channels – NHK, ABC, France 24 and Russia Sunday – complete the bouquet of channels on the DTH wing.

    “The capacity to carry channels on our DTH wing is set to increase significantly as Doordarshan is planning to buy equipment that will allow it to utilise an additional transponder on satellite INSAT 4B,” a DD official told indiantelevision.com.

    Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar has earlier said another aspect that the broadcaster is considering is how it can get better quality channels on its DTH wing. “We are considering framing a policy by next year which will allow the best of channels to be shown on our DTH platform,” Sircar said.

    There was a need to consider a new policy which would be transparent but also to ensure that the best of channels prefer to come to the Doordarshan platform so that they can be shown to viewers all across the country, he said.

  • Actress Sakshi Tanwar starrer Bawra Mann to open 2nd Bangalore Shorts Film Festival

    Actress Sakshi Tanwar starrer Bawra Mann to open 2nd Bangalore Shorts Film Festival

    NEW DELHI: A total of 45 films will be screened in the Bangalore Shorts Film Festival to be held in the garden city on 22 June.

    The film Bawra Mann; directed by Mitu staring Sakshi Tanwar (of Bade Achhe Lagte Hain fame) which tells the story of women desire will open the day-long Festival organised by Miniboxoffice.

    This festival received a total of 187 films this year. The dilemma directed by Sushil Bhati shows the inner conflict of a person who is doing something but wants something else, while Sando Da directed by Abhirup Ghosh is about an aspiring detective, and Tales of the Road tell a road story in very exciting.

    The aim of the Festival is to popularise the work of young & experienced filmmakers from across the India and the world.

    Films from Spain, Germany, Brazil, Russia, US and from almost every region of India are being screened. The festival jury includes national award winning director Unni Vijayan and documentary filmmaker Amit Mitra.

    This is the second edition of this festival, which began last year to mark 100 years of Indian cinema and salute the contribution of the Kannada film industry towards the development of cinema in India.

    The festival provides a platform to aspiring and professional filmmakers for showcasing their talent with networking and marketing opportunities in film industry.

    The festival objective is to create a short films culture in India, promotion of upcoming filmmakers, developing sources of revenue generation for short films and to make short film making a commercial enterprise.

    This year, the festival will introduce more workshops and master classes. The Miniboxoffice HL meet will be the highlight for those filmmakers who want to venture into feature film production, conducted by Festival director Rambhul Singh

    BSFF-13 is organised by India‘s only independent film festival organising company Miniboxoffice. BSFF-13 provides networking and contact building opportunities to filmmakers. BSFF-13 gives marketing and distribution facility for filmmakers which no other festival in India is providing.

    Miniboxoffice has established festivals in Delhi, Noida, Bangalore, Kolkata, Mumbai, Bhopal and a few more festivals are coming up. All Miniboxoffice festivals have completed one or two editions.

  • Indian short on Tarapur power plant gets Yellow Oscar

    Indian short on Tarapur power plant gets Yellow Oscar

    NEW DELHI: The documentary ‘High Power’ by Pradeep Indulkar on the Tarapur power plant in Maharashtra received the Best Short Documentary award at the 3rd International Uranium Film Festival of Rio Janeiro 2013 in the cinema of the Modern Art Museum (MAM) recently.

    Six Films from six countries – Russia, India, USA, Estonia, Jordan and Germany – were honored with the Uranium Film Festival‘s trophy, the Yellow Oscar.

    The festival screened 52 documentaries and fiction movies from 19 countries.

    The 2013 finalised documentary "High Power" gives worthwhile impulses to current "nuclear question" in India.

    Pradeep Indulkar, director of "High Power", is an Indian engineer who has been working during 12 years for India‘s nuclear programme.

    High Power tells the disturbing story of the local population of Tarapur in the state of Maharashtra, where India‘s first nuclear power plant was constructed in the 1960s. Local fishermen families lost their land, their fishing grounds and health.

    "It is an important, nuclear discussion stimulating documentary, that comes at the right time, when thousands of people in South-India struggle against a new nuclear power plant at Kudankulam is the state of Tamil Nadu", says Festival director Norbert G Suchanek. "High Power is Pradeep Indulkar‘s first documentary, and we hope to see more documentaries by him in future."

    "Apart from all the sorrows and distress my film brought to you, this is a golden moment of my life as a filmmaker", said Indulkar during the Award Ceremony in the Museum of Modern Art cinema. "At this moment I remember and thank all my friends and well-wisher who helped in making of High Power. I also thank to all those Indian people who contributed even a smallest amount to make our trip happened. I thank you all who supported this film with as a great audience. I thank Rio, I thank Brazil and I accept this award on behalf of all the nuclear affected people of Tarapur and I dedicate this award to all those farmers and fishermen who lost their land, home and life for nuclear power plant."

  • India’s strong showing in Publicis Groupe’s global growth in Q1

    MUMBAI: India continues to be a driving force for France-based global media conglomerate the Publicis Groupe in 2013. The group‘s business in the country grew at 10.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2013. It was the region to record the second highest growth after China that grew at 15.2 per cent.

    Publicis Groupe‘s consolidated revenue for the first quarter of 2013 was Euro 1,563 million, up 7.6 per cent from Euro 1,452 million for the same period in 2012. The group registered overall organic growth of 1.3 per cent for the first quarter (8.5 per cent organic growth in digital and -2.3 per cent in analogue/non-digital business).

    The growth by geographies was led by the BRIC+MISSAT (Brazil, Russia, India and China + Mexico, Indonesia, Singapore, South Africa and Turkey) regions at 14.2 per cent. The two combined territories grew from revenue collection of Euros 176 million in Q1 2012 to Euros 201 million in the first quarter of 2013. Russia grew at a rate of 5.7 per cent.

    While North America contributed to nearly 50 per cent of the revenue, majority regions in Europe saw significant negative organic growth. Publicis‘ revenues in North America grew from Euros 724 million in Q1 2012 to Euros 776 million in Q1 2013, an increase of seven per cent. The region saw organic growth of 4.4 per cent.

    Europe (excluding Turkey and Russia) registered organic de-growth of 6.5 per cent. It saw advertising investments decline sharply, mainly in the non-digital segment (analogue). The vast majority of countries in this region recorded negative growth, including Germany (-4.8 per cent), the UK (-6.1 per cent), France (-11.3 per cent), Spain (-13.1 per cent) and Italy (-13.7 per cent) while Central Europe grew by 3.8 per cent.

    The group has maintained its thrust on India with its only acquisition in the quarter coming in the form of full service digital marketing and consulting agency Convonix. It is expected to align with Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) in India to provide search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing and online reputation management to an extensive roster of clients.

    Major account wins for Publicis Groupe in the country in this period included HP (DigitasLBi), Eureka Forbes (DigitasLBi) and Subway India (Publicis Worldwide).

    Publicis has also recently made it known that it plans to make more acquisitions in the country. A technology services firm is said to be the next target on the group‘s mind which will be merged with its digital entity Razorfish on acquisition. Details of the agreement are expected over the next month.

    Other major investment for the group in Q1 2013 was the completion of the share purchases of digital agency LBi International and the buyback of shares (approx. 3.9 million for a total price of 181 million euro) from Japanese media giant Dentsu.

    The Groupe expects its revenue stream to grow slowly in the first half-year, then gathering pace in the second half-year, with annual growth for 2013 exceeding the market and its own performance in 2012. The Groupe‘s internal objective is between 3.2 per cent and 3.6 per cent.

    Publicis chairman and CEO Maurice Levy said, “As I predicted, 2013 is turning out to be a difficult and contrasted vintage, with on the one hand the United States consolidating its growth and on the other hand Europe suffering. Our first quarter ended satisfactorily, and while 1.3 per centorganic growth may seem modest, it is above our internal objectives and compares with the strong growth recorded in the first quarter of 2012. This is particularly true for Europe with a 10 points gap between 2012 first quarter (+3.6 per cent increase) and 2013 (6.5 per cent decrease). The Groupe‘s transformation continues apace: digital activities now represent 37 per cent of total revenue, and strongly stands as our first activity. When combined with revenue from the so-called “emerging” markets, our business in these high-growth segments generates close to 60 per cent of our total revenue, in keeping with our five-year goal of 75 per cent from these segments. North America accounted for 50 per cent of our revenue in the first quarter of 2013. This rebalancing is very encouraging in order to meet the challenges of 2013 and 2014. They bear fruit as shown by our performance in net new business wins surpassing the high level of $ 2 billion. The pipeline remains solid and comforts us in the Groupe‘s ability to reach its objectives for 2013, namely to improve its margin and to outperform the market and our own 2012 in terms of organic growth.”

  • G.I. Joe Retaliation draws $132 million internationally

    G.I. Joe Retaliation draws $132 million internationally

    MUMBAI: Marking the biggest start of the year so far for any film and nearly double the opening earnings of G.I Joe: The Rise of the Cobra in the same markets in 2009, Paramount‘s action thriller G.I. Joe Retaliation opened to a strong $80.3 million at the international box office.

    Directed by Jon M Chu, G.I. Joe comprises an international cast led by franchise newcomers Dwayne Johnson and Bruce Willis. The film debuted with $51.7 million in North America for a global opening of $132 million.

    The film did particularly well in Russia, Latin America and Asia — all markets where 3D remains a popular format. Among 2013 releases, the movie opened 10 percent ahead of Oz the Great and Powerful and 25 per cent ahead of Willis‘ A Good Day to Die Hard.

    The film opened in a total of 54 territories representing 75 percent of the international marketplace. The only major territories left to open are China and Japan. Top openings included Russia ($11 million), South Korea ($6 million), Mexico ($6 million) and Germany ($4.5 million).

    The film has been placed at No. 1 in most of the countries, although 3D animated film The Croods did better than it in the U.K.

    From DreamWorks Animation and 20th Century Fox, Croods opened in another five markets over the Easter weekend including the U.K. where it roped in $5 million. The family film was placed No 2 internationally for the weekend, earning $52.5 million for a foreign total of $140.5 million and worldwide cume of $229.1 million.

  • 86th Oscars shifted to March to avoid clash with Winter Olympics

    86th Oscars shifted to March to avoid clash with Winter Olympics

    MUMBAI: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that the 86th edition of the Academy Awards now known as Oscars will happen in March next year to avoid a clash with the closing ceremony of Winter Olympics in Russia.
     
    The 86th Oscars, which will be held on 2 March, 2014, would have clashed with closing ceremony of Winter Olympics in Russia had the organisers kept its traditional last-Sunday-of-February slot.
     
    The 87th Oscars will be back to its routine in 2015 and will happen on 22 February, 2015.
     
    The 86th and 87th Oscars ceremonies will be held at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network.

  • Room for smartphone growth in emerging countries: Nielsen

    Room for smartphone growth in emerging countries: Nielsen

    MUMBAI: While smartphones have gone mainstream in many regions around the globe, adoption among emerging countries is still developing. According to new research from Nielsen, China is the only country among the high-growth Bric (Brazil, Russia, India, China) markets where smartphones are predominant, owned by two-thirds of Chinese mobile subscribers as of the first half of 2012.

    In contrast, feature phones—devices with no touchscreen, QWERTY keypad or operating system—are still dominant in India and Russia, owned by 80 per cent and 51 per cent of mobile subscribers, respectively.

    There’s no clear favourite type of mobile device in Brazil, with mobile ownership split between 44 percent feature phones, 36 per cent smartphones and 21 per cent multimedia phones (touchscreen and/or QWERTY keypad, but no operating system).

    Much the same manner as social media, smartphones–with their advanced functionality and access to a multitude of apps–influence everything from consumers’ interaction with both brands and each other, to and shopping and purchase decisions.