Executive Dossier

Shereen Bhan differentiates business news for digital-first audience

Published

5 years ago

September 17, 2020

NEW DELHI: The managing editor of the top business news channel in India currently, Shereen Bhan is one of the most prominent journalists active in the television industry. With a career spanning over more than two decades, the lady has been behind creating some of the most prominent, renowned, and revered properties like ‘We The People’ and ‘Line of Fire’, 'India Business Hour', 'Restarting India' among many others. Also the anchor and editor of Young Turks, one of India's longest running shows on entrepreneurs, Bhan, to her credit, has a great bouquet of path breaking work in the business news space. In a candid conversation with Indiantelevision.com, Bhan talks all about her journey in the industry, the changing dynamics of television news production, and the new ‘Clutter Breakers’ programming of the channel.

Please tell us about your background. How did you end up getting into the journalism business?

So, my childhood was pretty much all over the place (chuckles). My father was a fighter pilot in the Indian air force. So, I had to travel a lot and start afresh every two years; new school, new friends, new routine. I spent my childhood across several Indian cities and a few years in Iraq, too. It made me quite adaptable, flexible, and taught me not to take things for granted, and not be complacent. And I think all these qualities have helped me in my professional career as well.

How I landed in journalism is a different story. I wanted to be a doctor when I was in school, being heavily influenced by a large part of my family, who were medical professionals. After my class tenth board exams, I did a short stint with my aunt at her nursing home and realised that it was not meant for me.

Then I always had an interest in arts and I was always a part of school editorial boards and debating clubs, and I was looking forward to a career in documentary filmmaking. But it so happened that while I was doing my masters, I ended up doing an internship with Sidharth Basu. I was working on a current affairs show that he was anchoring and I got a chance to do some mock interactions with the live audience. I realised that this is what I wanted to do. Basu also told me and motivated me that I had the flair, and it has been more than two decades since.

How did your family react to it?

My family has always been very supportive of what we do. They just want us to excel at whatever we are doing and give our hundred per cent to it. Both, my sister and I, have chosen our careers independently. She is a dancer and has her own academy in San Francisco. Our parents have always supported us.

Read more news about CNBC TV18

So, was business journalism a conscious choice or it just happened? Did you never feel like doing the mainline political reporting? I mean, you have a very small and niche audience in business beat.

My first job was with Karan Thapar as a political journalist but when I joined CNBC TV18, 19-years ago, I just happened to fall in love with the work. I was very clear what I wanted to do then.

We assume that business news is only for people who are active in business but it is certainly not the case. Business impacts all of our lives in so many different ways. Be it the government reforms or the business of education, or the business of healthcare. So, it is also a human story. It doesn’t need to be seen only from the prism of profit and loss. So, even when I became the managing editor at CNBC TV18, my aim was to expand the crucial view of what gets covered in the business news.

Our viewership might be small in comparison but it is more about the influence that we have, for me. Who are the people who are watching CNBC TV18; they are the biggest politicians, biggest entrepreneurs, biggest CEOs. And that is the testament of our credibility.

Apart from reporting and anchoring, you have also conceptualised a great many shows during your career. Can you share with us how you go about planning and creating such properties?

Whenever planning a show, we are very clear about two facts; our programming has to be different, and it has to serve the audience and give them what they are looking for. We have to stay relevant to our consumers.

Additionally, TV is all about fieldwork. It’s all about complete alignment and coordination. You have to bring on the same page the anchors, the writers, the graphic teams, the camera team; so you must be able to communicate your vision very clearly to them.

If I talk specifically about our new line up called Clutter Breakers, we noticed that TV news viewership is rising in the lockdown. People are locked up inside home and what they are looking for is not just news but reliable and credible information. So, the whole programming was done keeping in mind this very fact and we said let's bring in the most influential voices together, get the premium leaders across industries together and then give a historical perspective to the situation, and then sought out what the future would be like.

And what are the differentiating factors for this new lineup from other offerings on TV news?

It is about the content and presentation both. As I said, with the content, we are bringing in the most credible and influential voices within the industry interacting with the audience. We are doing deeper investigation as to how different companies will react to the market situations bound to come. We are bringing in top investors and analysts on board to help people make more informed decisions.

In terms of presentation, everything is bite-sized. So, you no longer have to navigate through a half-hour show to get the relevant information out.

So, there has been an impact of the digital revolution on TV content too?

Absolutely. We have to think about the digital-first audience and that’s why bite-sized properties help. We also have to keep in mind that the content remains accessible to those people too who can’t watch us on TV and primarily consume our channel through digital channels and apps. It also helps us take real-time feedback and make our products more relevant to the consumer.

What are your thoughts on the current state of journalism in the country? Do you think that a mad race for the TRP justifies the content we are seeing on TV news?

I think we are not in the news business anymore; we are in the infotainment business. And that is the sad reflection of our newsrooms today, which are overtaken by a single story. There is a uniformity in content, virtually very little differentiation in the presentation too. It has all become so much studio-driven. And I don’t think that the audience wants only this type of content. If that would have been the case, we might not still be enjoying top position in our category.

Related Topics:business journalism clutter breakers CNBC TV 18 shereen bhan biography tv news anchors

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Executive Dossier

Game on, fame on as Good Game hunts India’s first global gaming star

Published

3 weeks ago

January 27, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Game faces on, pressure high India’s gaming ambitions are levelling up. Good Game, billed as the world’s first as-live global gaming reality show, has officially launched in India with a bold mission: to crown the country’s first Global Gaming Superstar.

Blending esports with mainstream entertainment, the show brings together competitive gaming, creativity and on-camera performance in a format that tests more than just joystick skills. Contestants will be judged on gameplay, screen presence and their ability to perform under pressure, reflecting how gaming has evolved from pastime to profession and pop culture currency.

Fronting the show are three high-profile ambassadors: actor and entrepreneur Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cricket star Rishabh Pant, and gaming creator Ujjwal Chaurasia. The winner will take home Rs 1 crore ($100,000) among the largest prize pools for any Indian reality show along with the chance to represent India on a global stage.

Backed by a planned annual investment of up to Rs 100 crore, Good Game is also courting brand partners, promising a minimum reach of 500 million among India’s core youth audience. The creators position the show as a bridge between entertainment and interactive culture, offering long-format content, community engagement and commercial scale.

Auditions are now open to Indian citizens aged 18 and above, inviting amateur and professional gamers, creators and performers alike. Shortlisted candidates will be called for in-person auditions in Mumbai on 14 and 15 February, and in Delhi on 28 February and 1 March 2026.

With big money, big names and even bigger ambition, Good Game signals a shift in how India views gaming not just as play, but as performance, profession and prime-time spectacle.

Digital

SpotDraft hires new CMO and CFO to fuel global push for its AI contract platform

Published

3 months ago

December 3, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

INDIA: SpotDraft has strengthened its senior ranks as it gears up for faster global expansion, naming Alon Waks as chief marketing officer and Amit Sharma as chief financial officer. The appointments follow the firm’s $54 million Series B round earlier this year and mark a push to scale across the Americas, EMEA and India.

The AI-powered contract-lifecycle-management platform has posted 100 per cent year-on-year growth in customer acquisition, counting Apollo.io, IPSY, Mixpanel, Oyster and Panasonic among its global clients. The firm processes more than one million contracts annually, with volumes up 173 per cent and nearly 50,000 monthly active users.

Waks, a veteran of Kustomer, Bizzabo, CreatorIQ, LivePerson and ZoomInfo, will steer global marketing and category positioning as legal teams adopt AI-driven tools. Sharma, who has led finance across scaling tech firms since 2016, will guide financial strategy, investor relations and market expansion.

Both hires aim to sharpen SpotDraft’s bid for a larger slice of the fast-growing legal-tech market, expected to exceed $63 billion by 2032. Co-founder and chief executive Shashank Bijapur said the company is focused on scaling go-to-market operations in the Americas, deepening leadership in EMEA, and accelerating AI capabilities for general counsels and legal-operations leaders.

Clients report shorter deal cycles and better alignment between legal and business teams. “What used to take weeks now happens in days,” said Abnormal Security senior legal operations manager Susan Koenig. DeepL head of legal operations André Barrow, said SpotDraft has helped reframe legal “from a cost centre to a generator of revenue”.

Executive Dossier

Outdoor Ads Get Smarter as LOC8 Shifts OOH from Visibility to Attention

Published

3 months ago

November 28, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Out-of-home ads were once the wallflowers of marketing seen by everyone, noticed by few. But in an age where attention has become the world’s most fought-over currency, even billboards are getting a brain upgrade. Enter LOC8, OSMO’s AI-powered attention engine, quietly reshaping the old OOH playbook by measuring not just who could have looked at an ad, but who actually did. The shift is subtle but seismic: impressions are out, impact is in and data, not gut instinct, is calling the shots.

In a landscape where marketers question every rupee spent outdoors, LOC8 is turning lampposts, flyovers and traffic islands into precision-mapped attention laboratories. By crunching dwell time, visibility zones, perceptual size and real-world obstructions, the platform is dragging OOH into a future where creativity meets computer vision and where the best ideas aren’t just eye-catching, but eye-measured. From automotive facelifts to FMCG novelty and real estate trust-building, the message is clear, outdoor has stopped shouting and started listening. Indian Television Dot Com explores more about it in an Interview interview with OSMO co-founder Nipun Arora.

On how OSMO is shifting outdoor advertising from a visibility-led medium to an attention-led one through LOC8.

Traditional OOH has long been measured by visibility and impressions i.e how many people could see an ad. OSMO, through its proprietary AI platform LOC8, is shifting that narrative more towards likelihood of being noticed. Using computer vision and machine learning, LOC8 analyzes real-world video data to measure visibility zones, obstructions, dwell time and perceptual size; bringing precision to how attention is quantified outdoors. It moves the focus from mere impressions to quality of impressions, making OOH a data-verified, attention-led medium comparable to digital in accountability.

On how marketers can use LOC8’s dwell-time, visibility and perception insights to craft more effective, emotionally resonant OOH campaigns.

LOC8 helps brands understand how people truly experience outdoor media how long they look, from what distance, and under what conditions. By quantifying dwell time, visibility duration, and perceptual size; marketers can plan campaigns that align with real human viewing behavior. This empowers creative and strategy teams to design emotionally resonant storytelling where messaging, visual hierarchy and placement are optimized for how people actually notice and process OOH creatives.

About what LOC8 has revealed through campaigns like Renault Triber and Namaste India on how categories such as auto, FMCG and real estate use attention metrics to drive outcomes.

Each category uses attention data differently but all share one common goal: to convert outdoor visibility into measurable engagement.

• Automotive | Renault Triber

For the new Renault Triber facelift, bold creative met data-led planning through LOC8. By analyzing on-ground video data, LOC8 measured real audience attention across placements factoring in visibility zones, obstructions, traffic speed and perceptual size. This enabled Renault to identify corridors that delivered maximum reach, saliency and engagement, optimizing media efficiency and ROI.

• FMCG | Namaste India

In OOH, innovation is the hook and assets are the bait. But bait often hides the hook. With Loc8’s attention metrics, we ensured the bait wasn’t a hurdle, rather it became the perfect stage for innovation to deliver its full impact! The insight proved that creative novelty, when validated by attention data, drives deeper engagement and measurable brand lift.

• Real Estate

For luxury and real estate campaigns targeting HNI/UHNI audiences, attention patterns differ especially between front and rear passengers, who are often the core audience segment for premium sites. LOC8’s ability to distinguish rear vs. front visibility plays a critical role here. It helps identify sites that offer longer viewing windows and stronger perceptual dominance from the rear seat where decision-makers are most likely seated making it a key differentiator for premium and trust-led categories. Together, these insights prove that auto optimizes for impact, FMCG for recall, and real estate for trust visibility showing how attention metrics adapt to category goals while ensuring measurable outcomes.

On how attention analytics will shape the future of brand storytelling and media planning as OOH becomes more digitised and data-driven.

As outdoor digitizes, attention analytics will inform not just where to advertise but how stories are told in public spaces. This evolution transforms OOH from a static broadcast channel into a dynamic attention ecosystem, where creativity is optimized through evidence-based insight.

On how LOC8’s data-led framework helps marketers quantify OOH impact and make outdoor a more accountable, ROI-driven medium.

LOC8 bridges the gap between intuition and evidence. By quantifying metrics like visibility duration, attention opportunity index, and visual saliency rank, it allows brands to benchmark site performance and justify investment. This data-led approach brings transparency, comparability and ROI measurement to a medium historically driven by perception.

On how OSMO ensures AI and computer vision enhance creativity rather than reduce it to numbers.

OSMO believes that technology should enhance creativity, not overshadow it. LOC8’s attention models reveal what naturally draws the human eye helping creative teams refine design cues, contrast, and visual hierarchy for greater impact. By merging art and science, LOC8 empowers creativity with intelligence.

About the creative best practices and design cues LOC8 has uncovered regarding what truly captures consumer attention outdoors.

LOC8’s visual cognition analysis has surfaced clear patterns across campaigns:

• High contrast and minimal messaging outperform cluttered designs.

• Motion cues draw significantly longer dwell times.

• The first two seconds are critical, creatives must establish focus instantly.

• Contextual alignment between the creative and its environment increases attention by over 30%.

These learnings offer a scientific foundation for creative effectiveness helping brands design OOH that’s visually magnetic and emotionally memorable.

On how attention metrics will integrate into omnichannel planning where OOH, digital and social work together for unified brand impact.

Attention can become the unifying KPI across OOH, digital and social to creates seamless storytelling continuity, where outdoor triggers digital engagement. The future of omnichannel planning lies in attention-led integration ensuring that campaigns don’t just reach audiences everywhere but truly capture and hold their focus.