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Bloomberg UTV’s FINANCIAL LEADERSHIP AWARDS 2012 honours the Visionaries of India’s Financial Sector
 Bloomberg UTV, India’s premier business news channel, on April 7th, presented the FINANCIAL LEADERSHIP AWARDS 2012 to honour the extraordinary Financial Leaders and Visionaries of India’s Financial Sector. Hon’ble Finance Minister Shri. Pranab Mukherjee, as the Chief Guest, presented the awards to the winners. Mr. Deepak Lamba, Business Head – BloombergUTV said, “It is an honour and privilege for Bloomberg UTV that Shri. Mukherjee has consented to grace the Financial Leadership Awards and give away the awards. This is the second consecutive year that Shri. Mukherjee has presented the awards and this is a testimony to the fact that these Awards are held in high esteem by all the stakeholders of the Indian financial system.” The Financial Leadership Awards were bestowed on 20 corporates across Banking, Equity, Currency, Commodity, Insurance and Mutual Fund sectors and two new Individual awards were instituted this year viz., the ‘Woman Leader of the Year’ and the ‘Life Time Achievement Award’. Mr. Deepak Lamba, speaking about the awards said, “Our vision was to create the most comprehensive, authentic, and exhaustive platform in the space of Financial Markets. The process, parameters of eligibility and measurement were framed by ICRA, our knowledge partners and auditors of the entries. These parameters were strictly enforced by them and no Bloomberg UTV executive was privy to the entire process.” The Jury Panel comprised of well-known and highly respected personalities from the Indian Financial sector. The jury members were Ashok Wadhwa (Group CEO - Ambit Holdings), Keki Mistry (Vice Chairman & CEO - HDFC Ltd.), Shardul Shroff (Managing Partner - Amarchand Mangaldas), Ridham Desai (MD & Co-Head - Morgan Stanley), G N Bajpai (Former Chairman – SEBI), Dr. Janmejaya Sinha (Chairman - Asia Pacific – BCG), Shailesh Haribhakti (Exec Chairman & Managing Partner - BDO Consulting), Amarjit Chopra (President – ICAI), Tamal Bandopadhyay (Dy. Managing Editor – MINT), Kaushal Aggarwal (MD - Avendus Capital), Dr. Chiragra Chakrabarty (Director - Financial Advisory, Deloitte), Karthik Srinivasan (Co-Head - Financial Sector, ICRA) and L Shivakumar (Sr. Group VP & Head - Western Region – ICRA)
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 MSLGROUP Asia Awarded PR Network of the Year
MSLGROUP Asia, Publicis Groupe’s flagship strategic communications and engagement company and the largest PR and social media network in Greater China and India, was awarded ‘Asia-Pacific Network of the Year’ at the prestigious Campaign Asia-Pacific 2011 PR Awards on March 30. A first-time nominee for the ceremony’s top prize, MSLGROUP fended off stiff competition from a number of well-established global PR agency brands to be crowned ‘Asia-Pacific Network of the Year.’ The Campaign Asia-Pacific PR Awards is renowned as a benchmark in the communications industry and rewards clients and agencies for the strategies, people and achievements that have transformed businesses and brands. The ‘Asia-Pacific Network of the Year’ award specifically recognizes business and client growth, talent retention and development, and PR innovation. Hanmer MSL, part of MSLGROUP India, also notched an Honourable Mention on the night, for its integrated communications campaign for STAR India Pvt Ltd.
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Media honchos join private equity firms or start venture funds
 As investor interest in a buoyant media and entertainment space is surging, high-profile media honchos are now looking to join media-focused private equity firms or start their owns venture funds by investing and providing operational advice to start-ups. Haresh Chawla, a former Network18 CEO who was responsible for the group’s growth, joined as partner in India Value Fund Advisors (IVFA). Here he will be responsible for leading IVFA’s media and entertainment investments, and will also be scaling up the businesses owned by IVFA across other sectors. The 1999-established IVFA has in the past done investments of $1.3 billion across various companies, including Radio City and Shringar Films and DQ Entertainment. Other corporate honchos, too, have made such switches. Rajesh Kamat quit as COO of Viacom 18 and CEO of Colors to join Chernin Group’s CA Media as India CEO. Prior to that, he worked with production house Endemol. More recently Shravan Shroff, promoter of Fame Cinemas, sold his stake to INOX, and started accelerator VentureNursery along with Ravi Kiran, former CEO and managing director of Starcom Mediavest. Both Shroff and Kiran have invested in the accelerator which will mentor start-ups before they go for angel funding. Initially, it will focus on six sectors: media & entertainment, retail, e-commerce, consumer technology, education and cleantech. In the past, Mohit Mehra of UTV joined Cinema Capital Venture Fund, while Sunaman Sood co-founded Acendo Capital Advisors. Sood was earlier part of the corporate strategy & business development team with STAR India.Top executives who have changed ship say they did so because gaining the number one position prompts one to look for new challenges. Experts say that the talent pool of executives who understand various aspects of the game is limited, as the media industry is not too old. “The media landscape is changing tremendously,” notes a former CEO of a leading channel. “A recent surge in various delivery and distribution platforms has given birth to various innovative start-ups. Several players are looking to invest with content and technology.” Even globally, Peter A Chernin, Rupert Murdoch’s long-time top lieutenant, quit News Corporation and formed CA Media (a fund Rajesh Kamat heads in India). To begin with, the company is looking for investment opportunities in media and new-media technology in developing countries and in a traditional media world that is littered with distressed properties. Michael Eisner, who worked with Walt Disney as CEO for two decades, is also planning to start his own production fund for films and television.
Jehil Thakkar, head of the media and entertainment practice at KPMG, notes “a lot of activity and growth” happening in this sector. “Private equity and venture capital players are closely looking at this for expertise, for investments,” he adds. “They also see these companies grow during times of cut-throat competition.”The recent past has seen a spate of activity among private equity players, including the UK-based 3i, Blackstone, Warburg Pincus, Capital International, Providence Equity and Citigroup, taking a keen interest in media. The last one year has seen a frenzied spell of deals, with 42 transactions valued at $940 million, according to a Ficci-KPMG report. For instance, Providence Equity invested around Rs 260 crore in Ufo Moviez, while HSBC’s PE firm invested around Rs 150 crore in Avitel Post Studioz. Despite the recent slowdown in the US and Europe, the long-term picture for entertainment and media in countries like India and China remains bright, say industry officials. According to a Ficci-KPMG report, the media and entertainment sector is expected to touch Rs 1,45,700 crore by 2016, with a compounded annual growth rate of 15 per cent. |
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No one-time endorsement fee, stars have more at stake now
 Salman Khan’s deal with yatra.com is part of a growing trend!
In his new avatar as Mr Yatra in a new commercial, superstar Salman Khan says, “Jo bhi deal chahiye mein dilaunga. Yeh meri commitment hai” (which ever deal you want, I will get it for you. That is my commitment). The latest one-liner is part of a deal with Yatra.com under which the online travel portal gave Khan a stake in the company for not just endorsing the product, but also give a real sense of ownership of the brand by proving his commitment.Yatra says, it doesn’t want to enter into a one-time association.“ It is not like an actor comes, shoots the ad and goes away. This is a continuous relationship,” says Dhruv Shringi, CEO and co-founder, Yatra.com The company has got Khan on board in order to expand into smaller markets and reach out to travellers looking for the cheapest holiday option. “Salman Khan can straddle across the entire social strata. Indians are travelling more often now. Leisure travel has grown dramatically over the last few years and we want to tap this growing market,” says Sharat Dhall, President, Yatra.com. This is not the first time Bollywood stars are looking at an alternate and more innovative way of earnings. Karishma Kapoor had picked up a majority stake in BabyOye.com, an online babycare products store, for an undisclosed amount. The highly enterprising Shilpa Shetty has launched real estate buying site GroupHomeBuyers.com — a 50:50 joint venture with Mumbai-based first-generation entrepreneur Hem Tejuja. Ajay Devgn and Sanjay Dutt invested in ticketing service Ticketplease.com. Celebrity management executives say the recent deals in this space are mainly sweat equity deals.“It’s a win-win venture for both parties. As companies get a brand push, stars use it as a medium to be in the news and in the public eye in between their movie releases and dry spells,” explains a brand expert. Bollywood stars are now being guided by wealth managers and their own business instincts to multiply their fortunes. Even in mainstream cinema, it’s not just Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan, even Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgn, Arjun Rampal, Imran Khan and Kareena Kapoor have entered into profit sharing agreement with producers. For instance, Aamir Khan gets 30-50 per cent of earnings from profits. According to industry sources, Aamir has asked for 45 per cent profit share with Yash Raj Films for his role in Dhoom 3.
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Will the 'Cloud' bring Indian advertisers into the Music Market?
 Most of us know how awesome Pandora Internet Radio is, from the times when it was accessible from India and other countries outside the United States. Later owing to legal restrictions streaming websites like Pandora, OpenHulu and CBS.com stopped providing access to countries outside USA. In the US due to the cloud based music platform like Pandora many new opportunities have arisen to sponsor content and artists as streaming services have gained users and listening hours The industry’s past experiments with digital media seemed promising at first but have not generated enough revenue to stem losses from sagging sales of compact discs. Against this backdrop, can a new generation of cloud-based streaming models revive the industry? “The short answer is maybe,” said Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Cloud-Based Music Streaming: Emerging Opportunities for Brands.” “Key trends are pointing in the right direction, including positive technology adoption forecasts, a profusion of social sharing activity connected to music, video channels that are generating revenue and expanded marketing opportunities around music content.” In a sign of how important online streaming and subscription music services have become to the recording industry, trade publication Billboard recently updated its weekly Hot 100 song chart to include data from Spotify, Slacker, Rhapsody, Cricket/Muve, Rdio and MOG. The revamped methodology went live in March 2012, after several months of testing that showed a rising curve for audio streams, from 320.5 million in the first week of 2012 to 494 million during the week of March 4, 2012. By comparison, digital track sales during that period decreased from 46.4 million to 27.1 million, according to Nielsen. Another indicator of the popularity of cloud-based streaming was a 50.5% increase in online music listening hours in 2011. According to a February 2012 report from AccuStream Research, US consumers spent 1.3 billion hours listening to music through internet radio and other streaming services in 2011, up from 865 million hours in 2010. The media spend associated with US internet radio and on-demand streaming services amounted to $293.7 million in 2011, according to AccuStream Research. This compares with $171.7 million spent on subscriptions to those services. AccuStream forecast that the total market would grow by 78% in 2012. Ad monetization is expected to grow at a healthy clip on the mobile side as well. eMarketer expects US mobile music advertising revenues to hit $591.5 million in 2015, more than doubling 2012’s total of $264.5 million. According to eMarketer estimates, the advertising component of mobile revenue is much higher with music than with gaming or video, largely because of the popularity of Pandora and Spotify on mobile devices. If we talk about Indian scenario, Google launched the equivalent of Pandora for the Indian music listening audience some time back called Google Music. It is a free online music streaming service that lets you search and listen from an enormous catalogue of Bollywood and Indian music. The service integrates the digital music catalogues of in.com, saregama.com, and saavn.com, tracks can be searched by name and era clicking on them starts playback instantly in a pop-up window. But for marketers to delve into this form of advertising there should be enough listeners on board right? But if we are able to answer the following questions, then the advertisers of India will have a chance to tap this unique TG.
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 Sleepwell appoints MPG as its media AOR
MPG India, a flagship brand of Havas Media, has been appointed as the media AOR for Sleepwell. The account, worth upwards of INR 20 Crores, will be handled by MPG Delhi. Sleepwell is well recognized brand known for providing state of the art sleep support solutions that lead to good health and serenity in our daily lives. A flagship brand of Sheela Group, it is ISO 9001 certified as well. Sleepwell’s media account was previously handled by Motivator (Group M).
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Slice Launches New Campaign Featuring Katrina Kaif
 PepsiCo’s popular mango drink, Slice is all set to celebrate the great Indian romance with mango through its new campaign featuring brand ambassador Katrina Kaif. Mango has a special place in every Indian household and everyone has an indulgence story to tell… mango is auspicious, mango is pleasure and mango is bliss. Inspired by the same passion for the fruit, Slice has captured the emotions in its new ad film in a uniquely Indian way to welcome the onset of the mango season. Accompanied by the tagline, ‘Ab Ras Barsega’, the latest commercial is a new chapter in the extremely popular ‘Aamsutra’ series, and it celebrates the abundance of mangoes in every bottle of Slice. Set in a beautiful haveli (palatial mansion), the new campaign presents Katrina in a playful mood with her rasiya (beloved) in mind. She is seen running through the corridors and the courtyard towards the fruit-laden mango tree by the river, while a qawwali plays in the background. The lyrics highlight her wait coming to an end, where she celebrates by playing Ras Ki Holi - a metaphor for her uninhibited expression of joy. “Every Slice film is a whole new experience, and though this is my seventh film with the brand, I feel nervous and excited like it is my first one again! That’s probably because ‘Ab Ras Barsega’ presents me in a whole new avatar. The look is refreshingly new, yet royal and sensuous. I had a great time shooting for the ad and I especially love the qawwali that is simply magical. I’m sure Mango Slice fans will enjoy watching the new campaign, right at the onset of the mango season!” said Katrina Kaif. The romance in the TVC is brought alive in a beautiful river-side haveli in Orchha (Madhya Pradesh). The film has been directed by Cannes Gold winning Director, Prakash Varma, who is known for his stunning visuals and storytelling.
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Star news will be called ABP news
 The MCCS has announced that its popular Hindi news channel, STAR News, will soon be rechristened ABP News. Bengali news channel STAR Ananda becomes ABP Ananda and the Marathi news channel STAR Majha will be called ABP Majha. The three 24-hour news channels are owned by the Media Content and Communications Pvt Ltd (MCCS) – a joint venture between the Ananda Bazar Patrika Group and STAR India Pvt Ltd. Both Ananda and Majha are No 1 Channels since inception. Star India Pvt Ltd and ABP, the principle shareholders, have agreed to discontinue the Star brand affiliation with the MCCS. Going forward Star wishes to focus on building their brand on their core business that is general entertainment. The core business of the ABP is news and it wishes to promote and establish its own brands in the broadcast news space through its subsidiary company - MCCS. MCCS has sustained its affiliation with Star brand for 8 years and both have benefitted from this association. In these years the three news channels have evolved into respected market leaders in their segment, which has helped MCCS become a strong and respected company in the broadcast news space.It has quality resources in its employees and built good equity among its stakeholders – loyal viewers’ base, clients, distributors and vendor partners. Content on all three channels are managed by some of the finest editors, journalists, anchors and technical professionals who have consistently maintained the highest standards of honest and ethical journalism. They would continue to maintain high standards of news quality, with the same integrity, transparency and speed.
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Publicis acquires Indian digital agency Indigo
 Communications giant Publicis Groupe has acquired Indigo Consulting, a full-service Indian digital agency, for an undisclosed sum. Indigo was founded in 2000, and has 160 people in Mumbai and Delhi. It will now operate as a unit within the Leo Burnett Group in India, retaining the Indigo brand. Its founder, Mr Vikas Tandon, will remain as Managing Director, reporting to Mr Arvind Sharma, Chairman of the Indian Subcontinent for Leo Burnett, said an official statement from Publicis. Mr Sharma said: “After this acquisition, every fourth employee of The Leo Burnett Group in India will be from the digital background. This is an important step in Leo Burnett India functioning as a fully integrated communications company. ”Indigo provides website design and development, search engine optimization, usability research and testing, and online marketing, on mobiles and in social media. Mr Tom Bernardin, Chairman and CEO of Leo Burnett Worldwide, added: “Over the years we have increased our efforts into this important market (India). Indigo Consulting, with its strong track record as a full-service interactive and technology agency, is the perfect strategic fit for our aspirations in India and around the world.’’
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