ITV

Tag: Vishwanath Kulkarni

  • Zeel company SugarBox makes senior level appointments

    Zeel company SugarBox makes senior level appointments

    MUMBAI: Content distribution network (CDN) services provider SugarBox –  in which Zee Entertainment Enterprises infused Rs 522 crore recently – has announced  a series of appointments at senior leadership levels to take the company to the next level.

    SugarBox has installed 200 CDN edge servers at key places of interest (PoI)  – including public transport, public place, rural area, hotels and co-living spaces and malls – in nine cities which allow users to connect to a local wifi network. Users have to look for “sugarbox” in their wifi settings and connect, open their Zee5 or Freeplay app, register using their mobile number  and stream and download movies and shows  without buffering or data charges. The service provider counts Railtel, Hyderabad railway station, CMRL, CSC WiFi, Central Railway and NMMT among its partners.

    Amongst these:

    ·       Ashish Kulshresth  who has come on board as business head. Ashish has over 20 years of strategic experience in strategic alliances, sales and marketing across edtech, e-commerce, telecom and media. Most recently, he was the VP – partnerships & online growth at WhiteHat Jr. At SugarBox, he will take up P&L responsibility and oversee the network expansion, as well as  revenue functions.

    * Ishan Choudhury is the growth head. With 14 years of experience across diverse strategy roles, including co-founding a hyperlocal services venture, he brings a balance of start-up exposure and key insights from running micro-ventures in large enterprises like Jio. He joins SugarBox from Weddingz, where he worked as the director of customer strategy. He will be responsible for driving strategic initiatives and customer traction for the company.

    * Rupsa Sinha as the brand head. With 12 years of experience across consumer brands like ICICI and Thomas Cook, Sinha has undertaken the unique challenge of creating a category defining brand – aLL from scratch, prior to SugarBox. She will be primarily responsible for building the SugarBox brand and creating awareness for the unique value proposition and disruption that the company creates.

    * Ashish Rana as the head of app partnerships. He has more than 15 years of experience, primarily across media & consumer businesses. He will be responsible for evangelism of SugarBox across digital industries with a key focus on OTT, e-commerce, fintech, edtech, mobility and foodtech.

    * Vishwanath Kulkarni  as the head of network rollout. He brings with him over 15 years of experience in the IT & Telecom domain, having been instrumental for the rollout of 2G, 3G and 4G networks for a telco in UAE and Reliance Communications. At SugarBox, he will own the network rollout and network maintenance function enabling the company to scale operations rapidly.

    Says SugarBox co-founder & CEO Rohit Paranjpe said, “We welcome AK, Ishan, Rupsa, Ashish and VK to the team and I’m grateful for the rich and diverse experience they bring to the company. We are at a very interesting juncture in our journey and their arrival brings fresh energy, expertise and perspective that will be pivotal in our rapid scale-up aspirations. We have an exciting couple of years ahead of us as we kick-start our association with the Indian railways and these key appointments will play a vital role in shaping our future.”

  • Star India goes whole hog on mobile

    MUMBAI: Even as fierce rival Zee Entertainment continues with its ban on the use of mobiles in its corporate headquarters at Marathon Futurex in Mumbai, Star India has taken steps to make its HQ mobile friendly – a stone’s throw away from the Subhash Chandra promoted firm. 2,500 employees, who work in the 32 floor swanky Urmi Estate in central Mumbai,  can  enter the Star India premises using their handsets. Last year, the media conglomerate issued mobile IDs to employees and also installed numerous iCLASS SE readers at doors and gates throughout the building  (apparently 19 or 20 floors of it are occupied by Star India).

    The solution was provided by HID Global, a worldwide leader in trusted identity solutions  courtesy its HID Mobile Access solution, powered by Seos, “As India’s largest multimedia company, we have extremely high security standards,” says Star India senior vice-president (administration & facilities) Sumir Yadav. “HID Global, known for being the market leader of access control solutions, was able to fulfill all our requirements. With HID Mobile Access, we can now take advantage of the latest technology in this mobile-first age and achieve better security without being intrusive or compromising the user experience.”

    He reveals that the company relied on smart cards for building access in the past. The cards were easily damaged and often misplaced, resulting in costly re-issuance of badges. Another weakness of the card-based access system was its inefficiency. Each new or replacement card had to be provisioned manually, costing Star India time and money as it continued to grow over the years.

    With the popularity of smartphones and other smart devices soaring in India in recent years, Yadav started to look for a new solution that could enable Star India to make use of employees’ smart devices for better physical security. “Mobility has always been rated highly in our offices, so from the get-go we knew the new access control solution had to work with smartphones,” adds Yadav.

    The deployment, from the initial planning to the solution going online, took Star India only 12 weeks, and has been in operation since January 2016.

    Mobile IDs, a core component of HID Mobile Access  were provisioned via the solution’s robust online portal, making it possible for Star India’s IT administrators to issue or revoke mobile IDs quickly, easily and efficiently. Whenever a new employee joins the company, the IT administrators can effortlessly enroll them into the system by simply sending the employee an email invitation. The system-generated email contains directions and an activation code for the recipient to download and use the HID Mobile Access App. Upon entering the code and successfully activating the app, the employee can begin using his or her mobile device to unlock doors and gates at Star India.

    “HID Mobile Access is very intuitive to use and helping to create a mobile-driven and secure workplace is the goal of our mobile access solution,” says HID Global India & SAARC director of sales, physical access control Vishwanath Kulkarni. “We are pleased that both Star India employees and the company’s IT administrators managing the solution are enjoying the experience.”  

    Feedback on HID Mobile Access from Star India employees has been positive, and the company is currently exploring options to deploy it to secure its canteen as well as its collaboration spaces. It is also considering expanding the scope of the solution to cover the management of its visitor and enable secure printing in the future.

    HR managers are all praise for Star India’s initiative but they question how long Zee is going to continue with its mobile fatwa issued a couple of years ago wherein employees were barred from using their mobile phones at their desks; the devices are kept in custody and calls forwarded to their land lines.

    Also Read :

    Star India channels outshone in English entertainment, movies genre

    Star reignites ‘World Cupwali feeling’