Tag: India

Mumbai, India – Infectious Advertising, India-based integrated creative agency, has appointed Nitin Sharma, former marketing director at UAE Exchange in Dubai, to be its new vice president of business.

The new appointment will see Sharma leading important businesses for the creative agency. He will work closely with Nisha Singhania, the co-founder and director of Infectious Advertising, to consolidate existing businesses and develop organic growth.

Sharma brings with him two decades of work experience in advertising and marketing. He has previously worked with companies such as creative agencies Ambience and O&M, marketing communications company DDB Mudra, and advertising agency Leo Burnett. Sharma has also handled key clients like McDonald’s, Johnnie Walker, HDFC Life, and Philips, as well as Kamasutra, among others.

Commenting on his appointment, Sharma said, “I am delighted to be a part of the Infectious family. Our purpose here is not about creating fancy ads, but exploring the unique calibrations of communication, technology, and data to shape consumer behavior and move businesses.”

Meanwhile, Singhania together with the agency’s other Co-founder Ramanuj Shastry, jointly commented, “Nitin brings with him the experience of working on big brands across markets. We look forward to having him on board as we have a shared vision for the agency. We are sure Nitin will help in taking Infectious to the next level.”

India – Dentsu international’s media agency arm dentsu X India has been appointed by Roca Bathroom Products Private Limited (RBPPL), also known as Roca Parryware, the subsidiary of Roca India that produces bathroom products, to be its strategic media partner.

The appointment will see dentsu X leading RBPPL’s media strategy, planning, and buying for the entire portfolio of both brands – Roca India and Roca Parryware.

Sharing on how the company landed the decision, KE Ranganathan, the managing director of Roca Parryware, said that the company was impressed by dentsu X India’s understanding of their target audience and the bathroom space, and that the company believes their proprietary tools and strategy will help them optimize each platform and enhance their reach. 

“Our company is back to healthy double-digit revenue growth since October 2020. Looking into the year ahead, there is huge optimism to sustain and grow even higher. To drive this growth momentum we are embarking on a focused brand campaign through mass media for our power brands – Roca and Parryware. While these two brands enjoy high brand recall among our customers, it is important for us to continue to stay on top-of-the-mind and embed relevant brand attributes. With this agenda, we looked towards dentsu X for a solution,” added Ranganathan.

Meanwhile, Divya Karani, the chief executive officer of dentsu X India, commented, “We are delighted to be the strategic media partners to Roca Parryware. We look forward to partnering them in scaling new heights.”

India – Global software company InfoVision Labs (IVL) has recently appointed Indian media company Krescendo Communications as its 360-degree marketing communications and alliance partner, with the aim to build a reputation and engage with stakeholders.

IVL is a startup digital transformation company that provides numerous solutions, such as enterprise mobility, and legacy modernization, as well as cloud migration, and predictive analytics, among others. The company’s digital transformation strategies are planned to ensure that the clients get more than just a new technology.

The partnership will see Krescendo Communications managing IVL’s markets, including Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, as well as India, and the United States, among others.

Ganesh Somwanshi, the founder of Krescendo Communications, shared, “IVL is known as the Apple of India and is witnessing 60% YoY growth. We are delighted to work with these bunch of techies and assist them in building a reputation and in achieving milestones through strategic 360-degree marketing and insight-driven communications.”

Meanwhile, Vinay Barigidad, the managing director of InfoVision Labs, said, “Krescendo’s strategy aligns with our communications goals. As a startup, we have witnessed many success stories and transformed many businesses. With this partnership, we aim to enhance our corporate reputation, and use communication and public relations to reach out to all our stakeholders across the globe.”

Mumbai, India – Team Vitality, French esports organization, has revealed its first-ever all-Indian ‘Call of Duty Mobile’ (CoDM) roster, as a part of its venture into mobile esports and expansion in India.

Team Vitality’s CoDM team is comprised of well-established esports players, namely Arav ‘MonK’ Narang – the team captain, Armaan ‘Moonscope’ Dharni, Priyank ‘DEATH’ Birajdar, and Akshan ‘Argon’ Madhani, as well as Samartha Ganesh ‘JOKOs’ Ghadge, and Samruddha ‘SAMS’ Ghadge. The team will be coached by veteran CoD player Harnoor ‘Toxy’ Mutneja, and will be managed by content creator Melson ‘mello’ Miranda.

Furthermore, the organization is also planning a ‘PAN-India Talent Hunt’ to find and train new talents across multiple rosters in the country.

Nicolas Maurer, the CEO of Team Vitality, commented that their aim in India is to start an esports team that would have its own unique identity while imbibing core Team Vitality values, saying that they are happy with the roster as they have the right skills, as well as the potential to be the number one team, and that the team members are eager to create their mark in a brand-new category. 

“The ‘Call of Duty Mobile’ team is the first step towards the expansion of our presence beyond Europe, and in line with our vision of conquering the esports world,” added Maurer.

Meanwhile, Amit Jain, the principal of the Rewired.gg, the venture fund that has invested €34M into Team Vitality, shared that they are delighted to have a team that consists of esports talent from diverse parts of the country.

“There’s still a huge untapped base of talent who we feel deserve the chance to showcase their skills and represent Team Vitality. So while I’m personally extremely excited for the team who I’m confident will take on the world and make India proud, we will continue to explore opportunities to find aspirational talent to help create life-changing opportunities for them,” said Jain.

Team Vitality’s new roster will be participating in regional and international CoDM tournaments in the coming months. CoDM fans can follow Team Vitality India’s Instagram for more updates regarding the new team.

India – Global marketing and advertising company Zoomd Technologies and its subsidiary Zoomd, the marketing technology user-acquisition and engagement platform, has launched their sales operation in India, to promote its online advertising and user acquisition services in the new market.

Following this endeavor, the company has also appointed Parthiban Vairamudi as its business development manager for its India and SEA operations. Vairamudi has previously worked as the chief executive officer of the marketing and advertising company DigitalOOH. He brings with him over 18 years of experience in the digital and business development sectors. Vairamudi will now be responsible for Zoomd’s growth in the Indian and regional markets.

Zoomd seeks to position itself as a viable player in the country’s advertising industry. According to a report by Business Standard in February 2021, the Indian ad spend is expected to rise by 23% for the year after experiencing a 21.5% drop in 2020.

“The strong market recovery we have seen in this quarter made it a final decision for us. We intend to onboard new customers and publishers over the course of the year and become a meaningful player in the Indian ad space. We welcome Parthiban to lead our efforts in this region,” said Ofer Eiten, the CEO of Zoomd.

India – Facebook in India has launched the second film ‘Dhara’ as part of the platform’s ongoing ‘More Together’ campaign series, done in collaboration with dentsu international’s creative agency Taproot Dentsu India.

The ‘More Together’ campaign intends to celebrate the first anniversary of Facebook’s consumer marketing journey in the country. The campaign series showcases the platform’s power of connections and communities through inspirational stories.

The previously released film focuses on the life of ‘Richen’, a female football coach in Ladakh – a region in northern India, who shares her players’ videos on the social media platform. It highlights how the power of connections not only creates a fan-following for her team but also drives her and the team’s career forward.

The sequel, meanwhile, focuses on the life of Dhara, a book lover who rescues books from being consigned to the bin and that with the help of Facebook, finds homes for many of her rescued books.

The story continues to explain how people can do more together and that there are endless possibilities one can achieve through the power of Facebook.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxVMXXtGZjA

According to Neeraj Kanitkar, senior creative director of Taproot Dentsu, the film is a sweet and simple demonstration of Facebook’s inherent power which is to supercharge the efforts of one person when the community gets behind it. 

“It is quite rare to be in the advertising business without having some love for the written word. So when Gauri Burma – the most passionate book lover amongst us – came up with the idea, we knew we simply had to make it happen. We hope that it inspires people to consider using Facebook to give a new lease of life to old, forgotten, and about-to-be-turned-into-pulp books,” said Kanitkar.

New Delhi, India – The Indian arm of the ridesharing platform Uber and dentsu international’s digital agency arm Dentsu Webchutney has launched a new campaign called ‘#WithinHerReach’ which aims to make work opportunities closer and accessible to women.

The latest campaign is released as a print ad on the first page of the national newspaper The Hindustan Times and has already started leading narratives on the subject across LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and among key decision-makers from the workforce.

#WithinHerReach, originally launched by the two companies last year, was in response to the fact that 3 in every 5 women limit their career opportunities within a radius of 1 kilometre from their respective homes – even at the cost of a higher paying job. Evidently, this highlighted the stark gender commute gap among the country’s workforce. 

In response, Uber has decided to drive conversations that support work from home (WFH) as a consistent option for women, driven by the current global states of the world due to the global pandemic. 

“2020 has been a year to forget but it did have one silver lining. More Indian women entered the workforce during the pandemic-induced lockdown, attracted by the possibilities of working remotely and on flexible hours,” said Sanjay Gupta, marketing director for APAC at Uber.

He added, “Participation of women in India’s workforce rose to 37% as of July-end from 30% in April. As we enter the new normal, let’s continue to fuel this momentum and make flexible work and WFH essential elements of corporate India.”

Speaking about the campaign, Priyanka Borah, vice president at Dentsu Webchutney said, “It’s safe to say that geography is history. With WFH and remote-working opportunities, fewer women will feel compelled to drop out of the workforce. And as a result of this, more women will grow into senior leadership roles. It’s taken a pandemic for us to get here – but it’s important we seize this silver lining to move forward.”

New Delhi, India – An increasing number of Indian consumers are showing willingness and interest to purchase electric vehicles, new report from auto-tech firm CarDekho and marketing company Omnicom Media Group (OMG) shows. 

According to the survey, 66% of customers are willing to buy electric vehicles, out of which 53% said they were strongly inclined to go electric. Among those surveyed, 13% are not yet ready for the transformation whereas 19% decline to go either way.

In addition, 68% of the customers showed their concern towards the environment and believe switching to EVs will help reduce air pollution, whereas 11% and 6% of respondents considered driving pleasure and lower maintenance cost respectively as the main reason for considering a shift to EVs. 

“The core objective of this survey was to gauge the consumer psyche and understand what sort of information or services from automobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) could help in the buying decision. Respondents suggested manufacturers offer a full list of service stations in any city, accessories for easy and fast home-charging, and an extended service warranty assurance for the car,” the companies said in a press statement.

The survey also showed that despite the optimism shown among respondents, certain percentages of consumers are also raising doubts about EV usage. In the survey, 43% of respondents stated that frequent recharging will be a big concern, with 20% raising concerns on the reliability of EVs during long drives or inter-city travel, and 16% considering inadequate infrastructure (charging stations) a bigger hurdle. Meanwhile, nearly 12% of those surveyed said that pricing was an important consideration.

CarDekho and OMG conducted the survey across India among potential 4W vehicle buyers. Almost 40% of the respondents owned an SUV with 29% owning a hatchback, followed by 25% with sedans.

Bangalore, India – Graphic India, a character entertainment creator company in India, has announced the launch of Toonsutra, a homegrown webtoon comics platform for mobile devices, which will officially launch in April.

The new platform aims to bring high-quality webtoon and comics optimized for mobile devices. It will feature different genres such as superhero, fantasy, and romance, as well as sci-fi, and Bollywood, among others.

Prior to its official launch, the platform will release new free stories daily from well-known webtoon creators and biggest comic hits in the country, as well as global comics translated in Hindi and other regional languages. Furthermore, the platform will also showcase and promote emerging rising star creators across India, giving them a home to tell their stories.

According to Sharad Devarahan, co-founder of Graphic India, Toonsutra will become the country’s new storytelling home for disruptive Indian creators to experiment, innovate, and create engaging webtoon comic stories.

“Webtoon platforms have become an explosive phenomenon across Asia with top webtoon apps cumulatively reaching over 70 million monthly users and over 100 billion views a year. For the first time, we want to make a webtoon app dedicated for Indians and spark a mobile webcomic revolution,” said Devarahan.

The app is exclusively for India and is available on IOS and Android.

India – Global broadcasting news company BBC News in India has teamed up with AliveNow, a global creative tech studio, for a campaign that sees the fusion of both OOH and augmented reality.

BBC news has launched its very own Instagram AR effect that will give users the opportunity to be part of the BBC News billboard, with the BBC audio track even playing in the background.

The campaign is to encourage its audience to ‘make more of their world’. BBC News said the initiative reflects its ambition to represent all those that come to them for trustworthy, impartial journalism. 

“Through this initiative, we are taking our commitment to ‘make more of your world’ to our audiences in the comfort of their own homes. With the help of this idea, we intend to engage with our audience at a deeper level and offer an honest opportunity to be part of our campaign. For this innovation, we’ve worked closely with the AliveNow team and are pleased with the fantastic outcome. I invite everyone to join in and be part of our campaign,” said Tejash Kothari, marketing manager of BBC News in the Asia Pacific.

The campaign is a first of its kind. The new Instagram AR effect is made available in six Indian languages, and offers three different billboard styles in various environments to select from.

Raghav Sharma, account manager at AliveNow India, shared, “It was exciting to partner with BBC News India to bring to their audience for the first time ever, a chance to see themselves on a BBC billboard through an Augmented Reality filter on Instagram. We hope that users are delighted by this Spark AR experience and tune-in to BBC in their regional language.”

The news company also encourages users to tag them when posting Instagram stories using the new filter for a chance to be on an actual BBC billboard.