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Tag: Times Internet

  • Gaana brings in Sandeep Lodha as new CEO

    Gaana brings in Sandeep Lodha as new CEO

    Mumbai: Music streaming app Gaana has bolstered its management by naming Sandeep Lodha its new chief executive officer and roped in former Times Internet executives Vivek Pandey as chief operating officer (COO), and Ram Awasthi as chief technology officer (CTO). With this new leadership team in place, the Times Internet-owned streaming service plans to foray into the OTT sector.

    All the three leaders bring with them almost 60 years of rich experience that is poised to provide Gaana with the growth impetus, said the platform in a statement on Tuesday.
    Times Internet, chief executive officer, Gautam Sinha said that the Indian OTT ecosystem is about as “exciting, dynamic, and competitive” as it has ever been and there is “unprecedented interest” from global companies keen to tap into the Indian consumer opportunity. “At Gaana, we are equally excited about our next stage of tech-led relationships with users, content producers, and advertisers,” Sinha added.
    A leader within the media and entertainment industry, Lodha has 22 years of rich experience in scaling brands in hyper-growth sectors with Disney, Bain & Company, Weddingz, and Intel Capital. 

    Pandey has been the vice president of revenue strategy and analytics at Times Internet and also managed TIL’s adtech stack. Previously, he was at the helm of major digital transformations at companies like Tata Cliq, MakeMyTrip, and Indiatimes Shopping.

    Awasthi is a technology leader with experience in envisioning, architecting, and delivering a broad range of distributed, internet-scale, and real-time applications. In his earlier role, he was responsible for leading new business initiatives and setting up high-performance technology teams and evaluating tech stacks for different business units under Times Internet.

    “Our new CEO Sandeep’s experience leading hyper-growth brands like Disney & OYO, Vivek’s 360-degree product, growth and monetisation experience, and Ram’s strong & visionary leadership in technology make us believe we can achieve the audacious goals we have set for the brand in the coming years,” Sinha said.

  • Zee Media appoints Abhishek Nigam as chief operating officer for digital business

    Zee Media appoints Abhishek Nigam as chief operating officer for digital business

    Mumbai: Zee Media has announced the appointment of Abhishek Nigam as its chief operating officer for the digital business. He was previously associated with Airtel as product head for its B2C platform.

    Nigam will be responsible for the entire digital operations that include 20 brands across 12 languages touching more than 300 million viewers across digital replicas of Zee Media’s 14 linear news channels along with websites such as  India.com, BGR.in, BollywoodLife.com, TheHealthsite.com, and CricketCountry.com, the company said in a statement.

    Commenting on the appointment, Zee group chief strategy and innovation officer Bibek Agarwala said, “Irrespective of the prevailing challenges, Zee Digital has reported exponential growth within last few years through strategic communications and technological advancements. With extensive experience and knowledge in the technology, product, and sales domain, Abhishek Nigam will definitely add value to the company’s vision and the overall implementation and development trajectory.”

    “Moving ahead, we are looking forward to an aggressive growth roadmap that will help achieve a differentiated and sustainable competitive positioning for Zee Media’s digital assets in this dynamically changing digital ecosystem”, he added.

    Commenting on his new role, Nigam shared, “I am delighted to join hands with India’s most diversified digital publishing group. It would be an honour to work with the highly knowledgeable leadership. My endeavour would be to help Zee Media scale new heights across the globe by aligning all the Digital assets and bringing in synergies through strategic measures and latest technological innovations.”

    As a seasoned professional with 15 years of experience, Nigam has worked with Times Internet and Jagran Group across product leadership roles. He also holds expertise in handling the vernacular language market. An IIT-Delhi alumnus, Nigam holds a B. Tech and M. Tech degree. His educational qualification also includes a senior management program from IIM, Calcutta, and AI professional program from Stanford University.

  • Ruchir Khanna joins Asianet News Media & Entertainment as COO

    New Delhi : Asianet News Media & Entertainment Pvt Ltd (AMEL) on Friday announced the appointment of Ruchir Khanna as chief operating officer of the company’s digital business.

    An accomplished digital media professional, Khanna was earlier working with Times Internet as the head of product and growth. During his stint at Times Internet, he led the digital growth of various properties of the group. He has over two decades of experience across product development, growth and marketing, content strategy and P&L management. He has also had leadership stints at Hike messenger, India Today Group and Yahoo! India, said the company.

    AMEL, executive chairman, Rajesh Kalra said, the team is building a media/ent-tech company of the future and building on the strong digital brands. 

    AMEL has multiple digital brands in it’s portfolio including asianetnews.com, indigomusic.com and serves consumers in multiple languages.

    “Our mission is to significantly expand audiences of each of these brands – with more innovation, content and services. Ruchir will provide significant leadership to this mission of ours. He brings with him the experience of building and growing some of the biggest and most successful digital products in India. I am really excited about the leadership team we’ve built. Ruchir joins us soon after Nachiket Pantvaidya took over as managing director. We are now fully geared-up in our mission to make AMEL India’s leading Media-Entertainment Tech enterprise,” said Kalra.

  • India Today Group is India’s No.1 video news publisher as per latest Comscore reports

    India Today Group is India’s No.1 video news publisher as per latest Comscore reports

    KOLKATA: In the latest Comscore video metrix report, the India Today Group has consolidated its position and emerged as India’s No. 1 digital news media group, restating the profound trust of viewers in the brand. The group has now become No. 1 on Comscore Video Metrix score with over 883 million video views. The nearest competitor stands at 483 million video views.

    India Today is now the undisputed leader in all the three important metrics of reach, video views and total minutes watched. The month of March saw Covid wave 2 gripping the country and election campaigns kickstarting across West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry. At this critical phase of the country, the India Today Group has emerged as the digital destination of trust for the citizens.

    With over 92 Million Unique video viewers, the group leads with a margin of around 25 Million Unique video viewers over the next news network. The group is double the video views of ABP Group and leaves behind many groups like Network 18, Times Internet, Zee Digital and NDTV.

    The group has also reported a growth of close to 70 Million video views over the previous month, highlighting the fact that when it comes to ‘News That Matters’, the choice of the Digital Consumer is clearly the India Today Group.   

  • Gaana CEO Prashan Agarwal steps down

    Gaana CEO Prashan Agarwal steps down

    KOLKATA: Gaana CEO Prashan Agarwal has stepped down after heading the music streaming service for five years.

    “After an amazing five years of leading Gaana to be the No. 1 Music streaming service in India, I am stepping down from my role as CEO and am extremely grateful to my wonderful colleagues, music industry partners and investors who put so much trust and empowerment in enabling me to deliver,” Agarwal wrote in a LinkedIn post.

    He thanked his mentors Satyan Gajwani and Vineet Jain for providing him with a platform to make such a remarkable impact on the Indian music ecosystem and bringing entertainment to more than 185 million users across the world.

    Gaana is jointly owned by Times Internet (the majority stakeholder), and Tencent, which raised Rs 3.75 billion in debt last year to help finance the company’s growth.

    Agarwal joined Gaana as CEO in May 2016. Before joining Times Internet, he co-founded multiple internet ventures including 19miles.com and PropTiger.com. He is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and the Indian School of Business.

  • Times Internet’s transformation from media company to tech company

    Times Internet’s transformation from media company to tech company

    KOLKATA: Digital disruption is reshaping the media and entertainment ecosystem at a rapid pace. As media companies adapt to the change, investment in technology is emerging as the need of the hour. Times Internet Ltd (TIL) COO Puneet Gupt also emphasised that every media company needs to have a tech mindset, during a virtual fireside chat hosted by Indiantelevision.com.

    Without proper technology being built and deployed, media companies will not be able to understand how the next wave of change could possibly affect the business, Gupt explained. TIL has successfully transformed itself from a media company having tech as a delivery engine to being a tech company that has media as an asset, he shared. Going forwards, tech is going to fuel TIL’s growth, making sure that all of its businesses grow on the back of the user base it already has.

    TIL leverages its massive reach for any newly launched product on the back of technology. Gupt explained that all of TIL properties are internally connected with a technology flywheel that tries to move users from a low ARPU high reach kind of product to a high ARPU kind of product. While the organisation has gradually built its tech segment over the last five-six years, the approach helps it to leverage the entire reach of TIL as well as all the learning for better content, tech and product decision for any new property.

    “We think we have cracked the science of virality and converting content to commerce. A few years ago, when the algorithms had not changed, some TIL properties were at the top of the virality charts,” Gupt said.

    He also shed light on TIL’s initiatives that have yielded positive results for the company. “For the last four-five years, we have been working on a bunch of components whether it is our own content management system, whether it is AI or ML algorithms for a lot of work that we do, or on the adtech side where we think there is a large vacuum of right technology being available to the publisher. The advertising technology today is heavily favouring the bias. It’s really built for the buy-side, not on the sales side,” he added.

    Realising the publishers’ need, TIL built its own ad tech engine – Colombia. Later, the company put the best of content management and advertising ability to build M-360, which is gaining good traction. Currently, M360 has 80-90 publishers on board and Gupt said that they expect the number to reach a few hundred in six-nine months.

    According to Gupt, 20-30 per cent of large media companies in India have already started investing in tech. But the initiative needs to reach medium and small publishers as well because a lot of “low-hanging staff” in newsrooms is going to be automated soon. However, he clarified that it does not mean that journalists might lose their importance. While technology can make churning out a part of content faster, journalists can focus on detailed, in-depth content.

    “You will get visitors, your visitors will have to convert to loyalists and the loyalists will have to convert to paid subscribers. This entire cycle has to work well,” he said. “The content that is created for the subscription side will be measured on the ability to convert a loyalist to a paid user; the ability to retain and renew a paid user,” he added further.

    With emerging technologies, the conversation around data protection is also becoming more prominent. Gupt stated that publishers should focus on respecting users’ choice and consent, focusing on receiving data properly rather than collecting it, thereby upholding the ‘right to be forgotten’. He termed TIL as a “worthy custodian of data” as it has always managed data with utmost care.

  • Times Internet rolls back pay cuts as business picks up

    Times Internet rolls back pay cuts as business picks up

    KOLKATA: As media companies start seeing a rebound in business after the initial shock of the Covid2019 crisis, many of the biggies have begun rolling back pay cuts. The latest addition to the list is Times Internet Limited (TIL).

    In a virtual fireside chat hosted by Indiantelevision.com, TIL COO Puneet Gupt said that employee salaries are back to the original levels and variables have been paid as well. While many media organisations are reducing team sizes, TIL has started selective hiring. In fact, TIL has seen gradual growth in last four-five months as market forces gain equilibrium, Gupt said.

    Recently, New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV) also said that it has ended salary cuts imposed on employees in the wake of the pandemic. According to media reports, major broadcasters like ZeeL, Viacom18, Star & Disney India also ended pay cuts starting from end September.

  • Puneet Gupt on Times Internet’s performance post-Covid

    Puneet Gupt on Times Internet’s performance post-Covid

    KOLKATA: Given the sudden uncertainties, digital publishers were fretting about the downturn in business at the beginning of Covid2019 crisis. Anticipating a very troublesome period, the publishers prepared to counter the worst situation. Fortunately, the industry has witnessed a better-than-expected state of business post Covid, Times Internet Ltd (TIL) COO Puneet Gupt said.

    In a virtual fireside chat with Indiantelevision.com founder, CEO and editor-in-chief Anil Wanvari, Gupt spoke about the overall sentiment in the industry which is turning out to be brighter with each passing month. According to him, TIL, as well as other publications, are now gaining momentum across all metrics. While there was a huge slump in ad spend in the first couple of months when physical movements were curtailed and the market was down, there has been a gradual growth month-on-month basis since things have started opening up, especially in the last four-five months.

     “As I say, it is a culmination of sequential growth that we are seeing month-on-month in our businesses. Maybe from July onwards revenue has picked up. I would be slightly worried about Q4 but at least with Diwali and going up to December I see that there is possible traction to build,” Gupt said.

    Despite the pessimism around festive spend in the industry, TIL has witnessed good business during Diwali compared to the last year. Categories like ed-tech, OTT, gaming and digital-only products were the big spenders this festive season. These categories have picked up the overall ad spend, leading the way while other categories are following.

    Amid the Covid crisis, several brands have moved their budgets to digital. Gupt acknowledged that the re-allocation of funds has helped them. “I personally think it’s a short term move and will be more even for a slight shift on digital and not the 30-40 per cent shift that we are seeing right now. But it may stay back at 10 per cent higher shift and rest goes back to the mediums where it came from,” Gupt noted. He added that TIL has witnessed significant growth in native advertising and video segment but display advertising has stayed under pressure.

    “We are doubling down on what we are doing. As an organisation, we have always said that programmatic is good as it gets us revenue and gives transparency to the buyer, but a one-on-one relationship with the buyer is important. Hence, we have a large sales team when some of the publishers were scaling down their sales teams and doubling programmatic. We were saying that we welcome programmatic but we want to double down on our sales team, relationships, people-to-people connect,” Gupt elaborated on the measures that have helped TIL to stay on the growth track.

    In terms of user engagement, there has been a huge spike on MX Player. The over-the-top (OTT) platform has seen 5X growth on time spent post-Covid. But the audio segment has not been to catch up with the growth of the video segment. TIL’s news properties have seen 40-50 per cent growth both in terms of engagement and visitors.

    While TIL has built a strong business on the back of ad revenue over the years, it still has a long way to go on subscription side, with a base of two million subscribers. “I don't think that 2 million subscribers is a challenge. It is a big success. We started this journey a few years ago and it’s something that all of us are learning. We are experimenting, learning and building it out. I think the next level of growth is just ahead of us. We think that in four-five years of time, about three-five per cent of our users would be paying in some form or the other. We are building for the long haul and creating consumer products across the ecosystem,” Gupt commented. He hopes TIL to maintain an average revenue per user between Rs 500-1000 per annum for that large subscriber base.”

  • Virtual Fireside Chat with Puneet Gupt, Coo, Times Internet Ltd

    Virtual Fireside Chat with Puneet Gupt, Coo, Times Internet Ltd

    Taking ahead its virtual fireside series with experts across media and entertainment industry, Indiantelevision.com will be hosting Times Internet COO Puneet Gupt on 25 November. The session will be hosted by founder, CEO and editor-in-chief Anil Wanvari.

    Gupt drives the strategy, vision and execution for all the internet mobile and properties of the group. He has close to two decades of experience in identifying market opportunities, product management, digital marketing, app growth and retention, monetisation of digital assets.

    He has been associated with Times Group over a decade. He was elevated as COO in 2018.He played a critical role in Times Internet’s news business when he was heading the segment.

    Tune in to know more!

  • Times Internet’s M360 partners with Google to enable effective monetization for digital publishers

    Times Internet’s M360 partners with Google to enable effective monetization for digital publishers

    M360, Times Internet’s turnkey publishing and monetization platform for publishers, has partnered with Google as a Google Ad Manager partner. M360 will now be able to monetize publisher inventory using the Google Ad Manager platform. Times and Google have a long standing partnership on Google Ad Manager.

    Made in India, M360 is a complete hosting and monetization platform that has quickly scaled up and now serves 25 Million MAUs outside of the Times Internet group. Apart from Google Ad Manager, M360 also leverages Times Internet’s homegrown premium ad-network, Colombia Audience Network, to provide leading advertisers and agencies to achieve performance for their marketing objectives at scale across a wide variety of ad formats and audience segments.

    Speaking on what this partnership means for M360 and Google, Puneet Gupt, COO – Times Internet said, “M360 aims to bring technological advancements in digital publishing to the smallest of the publishers allowing them to focus on bringing great content to their readers. We are happy to join hands with Google to provide enhanced monetization capabilities to Indian publishers on the M360 platform”

    “We’ve been working very closely with the Google team since the inception of M360 platform 8 months ago and this partnership is a testament of the strong synergy in building a comprehensive publishing platform for publishers who are looking to scale their revenues and engage their users. Our product has become a de facto platform for publishers looking to create, monetize and engage their readership through a seamless ad and content experiences across all platforms” said Arjun Satya, Co-founder – M360.

    “We have had a strong partnership with Times across multiple areas, and today we’re excited to be extending it even further. We hope this initiative will inspire  other publishers to build on their digital journey, so that together we can grow the digital publisher ecosystem in India,”  said Ryu Hirayama, Director and Head of APAC Partnership Solutions, Google.   

    M360’s hosting and CMS helps media organizations create a fast loading, non-intrusive ad and content portal which leads to higher CPMs for the same ad inventory. M360 runs over a state-of-the-art personalization engine, giving publishers an edge to engage and retain their audiences. This personalization engine leverages billions of combinations across 60k user attributes to recommend the best possible content and ads, all in real-time. M360 has also launched an integrated push notifications and newsletter management service for publishers to engage with their users effectively. Publishers shifting from their current hosting to M360 platform have seen anywhere from 30% to 160% lift their Page CPM within a few weeks of migrating from traditional hosting solutions. 

    With COVID-19 reducing ad revenue for publishers, M360’s partnership with Google for deploying Google Ad Manager will help publisher owners on M360 scale their revenues while incurring zero engineering and IT costs by paying a small subscription fee for M360 platform for hosting and CMS for fast-loading personalized sites.