Mohan Kumar Anand has joined Times Business Solutions as Chief Manager and Head of Ad Sales for SimplyMarry.com. Prior to this, he was working as Senior Manager, Interactive Business, at Zee News, and had worked on the launch of travel booking portal ZeeTravels.com and entertainment site SpiceZee.com. Before Zee, Anand had worked with Sify, Malayala Manorama and the Indian Express Group.
Outlook Group on July 4 launched ‘People’ magazine in India under a licensing agreement with Time Inc. The fortnightly personality oriented magazine has been priced at Rs 30.
Sameer Kapoor has come on board NDTV India as CEO. He will be responsible for driving the business of the channel, besides looking at revenues, distribution, general management and exploring new initiatives. Kapoor moves from Metropolitan Media Company Pvt Ltd, the JV between Times Group and HT Media, where he was President.
Ever wondered which songs India is listening to most on radio? For the first time, a compilation of a comprehensive airplay chart of songs on popular radio stations across the country has been done by AirCheck India. The radio monitoring service from Radio Computing Services has analysed airplay of popular songs in the first six months of 2008 and condensed the results into a chart of Twenty Most Popular Songs on Radio in India.
Radio Mirchi’s morning show ‘Hi Delhi’, hosted by RJs Anant and Saurabh, has been rated as No. 1 by RAM for the 25th Week. ‘Hi Delhi’ is a fun-based programme that looks at life in a tongue-in-cheek way, with mad antics by the show’s two RJs.
As India Inc invests more marketing rupees to create and sustain its brands, campaigns are the order of the day and they are getting bigger and more complex. CDC-CRM Solutions India, a provider of enterprise CRM and related solutions in India, has introduced its campaign management solution to address this issue.
Visage Images, the master delegate of Getty Images, is looking at rapidly expanding its library of images and intends to upgrade its content. Headquartered in Hyderabad, the company currently has a stock of over one million images and hopes to touch the five-million mark by the end of 2013.
Publicis Groupe has announced its acquisition of New York-based financial PR firm Kekst and Company, Inc. A privately held company, Kekst will now operate autonomously under its name as a member of Publicis Groupe’s Specialised Agencies and Marketing Services, and will continue to be led by Founder and CEO Gershon Kekst.
Multi-lingual portal Webdunia has unveiled a new easy-to-navigate homepage in all the nine languages. The portal has also added several new Web 2.0 and technology features like blogs, games and quest. Based on customer feedback, Astrology, Bollywood and Cricket sections have been made more prominent.
Hyundai Motor India Ltd has announced a novel ‘exchange and upgrade scheme’ that allows customers to lower their monthly car loan payments even as they upgrade to a bigger car. The scheme is targeted at all those users of smaller compacts who want to upgrade to a bigger car but can’t because of the higher EMIs of a bigger car.
OOH Media has tied up with MAM Movies as OOH TV partner for their film-making contest titled ‘I am the Change’. The contest invites filmmakers from all over India to make five-minute films on ‘101 NGOs’ in 101 hours. The contestants would be given any one NGO each based in the four metros of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai.
Contests2win.com has decided to ‘reward’ its users by sharing its advertising revenue with them. Contests2Win has claimed that their users have earned an average of Rs 4,800 per month as part of this initiative.
TBWA\India has appointed Yagna Raman as Creative Director for their Chennai operations. He will team up with Josie CD to manage the eight-member creative team. Raman, known as Yegi among friends, has been the Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Xerago before moving to TBWA\India.
Star One is all set to premiere its new dance reality show, ‘Zara Nachke Dikha’, on July 14. The show, which will be aired on Mondays and Tuesdays at 9:30 pm, will pit eight girls against eight boys in a ‘battle of the sexes’ format. This show is a home-grown format conceptualised by the Star One creative team and produced by SOL.
Bhushan Khot has joined Zee News as Vice-President and Business Head for their Marathi news channel, Zee 24 Taas. He will be reporting to Barun Das, CEO, Zee News. Khot took charge from July 3. Prior to Zee, he was with Times Group, heading the language brand team of BCCL.
TV18 has strengthened its editorial leadership team, with new roles being assigned to senior editorial executives and founding team members of CNBC-TV18, Senthil Chengalvarayan and Udayan Mukherjee. While Chengalvarayan has been elevated to President and Group Editorial Director, TV18 Business Media, Mukherjee takes charge as Managing Editor, CNBC-TV18.