Hasta La Motion!

As the fight for COVID-19 pandemic continues, Indian charity esports tournaments are coming forward by contributing funds to PM Cares Fund to fight the pandemic. Recently, SkyEsports PUBG Mobile Gaming charity event #PlayForACause to fight COVID-19 ended with the final collection of Rs.50,000. In the tournament team Orange Rock Esports (OR Esports) came out to be the best from the lot by securing the first place while team Leg stumps, the underdogs proved to be good till the final round whereas Ronnie Screwala’s UMumba secured a safe third spot.

On winning team Orange Rock Esports shares, “The team at Orange Rock Esports is incredibly proud of our efforts in the recent Sky Esports Charity Tournament. It’s an honor to be able to turn our victory playing the game we love into aid for our community and nation. The entire team at OR Esports is proud to donate our winnings to the PM Cares Fund.”

The tournament was broadcast on Sky Esports’ Youtube channel and Twitter channel. Notably, this was the first time Sky esports broadcasted an event on Twitter.

Sky Esports CEO Shiva Nandy shares to us, “The initiative was taken by Sky Esports along with our partners to host a charity gaming tournament to raise funds to PM Cares was very close to our hearts and it was just a small gesture we as a gaming community could do in this long fight against COVID 19. We thank all the teams, players and the support staff for coming forward and being a big part of this event. All the prize money will be going towards PM CARES on behalf of the whole gaming community. The amazing part was that the charity tournament was cast in three different languages Hindi, English and Tamil considering the reachability.”

The Hindi casters were Piyush ‘SPERO’ Bathla and Ketan ‘K18’ Patel, the Tamil caster was Prabha ‘Midfail Karan and the English caster was Angad Chahal aka The Experiment caster.  Here is the complete score chart of the tournament:

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Games24X7, a skill-based gaming company, has named veteran finance executive Rahul Tewari as its first chief financial officer with effect from 15 April 2020.

Games24X7 was founded by New York University alumni Trivikraman Thampy and Bhavin Pandya in 2006 and has commented on the appointment that, “Rahul is an exceptional finance leader and we are excited that he will help us in executing our strategy as we gear up for the next phase of growth. Last year, we made tremendous progress in growing our businesses. We are very happy to welcome Rahul to the team where his extensive experience in scaling rapidly growing technology companies makes him a valuable addition to our business.”

Tewari brings in over two decades of varied leadership experience across strategic finance, corporate development and investment banking in the technology sector. He most recently served as the chief financial officer at Quikr.

The appointment of Tewari comes at a time when Games24x7 is investing aggressively in its India centric mobile games business while also diversifying by investing in international gaming and other tech opportunities as it seeks to become a 21st-century scientific gaming company – built out of India for the world.

Commenting on Games24X7, Tewari said, “Games 24×7 is the pioneer and leader in the rapidly growing digital gaming market in India.  I’m thrilled and honored for the opportunity to work with the team. I look forward to working with our stakeholders to build on the Company’s incredible track record of success and innovation.”

Tewari is widely regarded for his rich experience in leading transformational strategic initiatives and financial transactions at global MNCs, high growth companies and emerging start-ups. He has worked in bulge brackets investment banks such as Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank in New York and led technology sector coverage at ICICI Securities. He has been an entrepreneur himself having founded and run a cross-border M&A advisory firm. He holds an engineering degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and is an MBA from Cornell University.

Games24X7 has been steadily strengthening its global leadership team. Earlier this year, the company has appointed former director (GSO) of Facebook India, Siddharth Banerjee as its first chief revenue and marketing officer to drive the organisation’s growth agenda in both India and international markets.

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Toonz Media Group, situated in Trivandrum, Kerala is one amongst the many studios that create some fascinating IPs for kids to enjoy. With the current pandemic situation across the world, many companies have been shut down, many are shifting bases and others are following the work from home option, to keep the work going.

Talking to Animation Xpress, Toonz Media Group CEO P. Jayakumar took us through the working patterns at their office. “The safety and health of our staff, partners and clients has been our paramount concern and hence we initiated work from home even before the nation-wide lockdown was officially declared,” said he.

P. Jayakumar

In this situation too, the company is achieving nearly ninety percent productivity, which is something they all were hopeful about but weren’t practically anticipating and therefore it has come as a pleasant surprise to them. All the artists and other staff are working from the safety of their homes and continue to deliver as efficiently as possible.

We hear many companies taking harsh measures and there are salary cuts, lay-off happening, but Toonz has decided not to implement any measures that would cause distress to our employees. “Our employees have really risen to the challenge and are ensuring that deliveries as well as sales are continuing to occur at its intended pace,” added Jayakumar.

The company is in fact giving back to the community at large. The educational arm, Toonz Academy is providing a 25 per cent fee discount to all their students whose immediate family members are part of the healthcare and police workforce. This is Toonz way of showing deep gratitude for the selfless service they’ve been providing.

To a certain extent, the pandemic definitely has posed challenges for all businesses. The development, pre-production, sales and other support-service teams at Toonz have been working effectively through collaboration from their homes in India, New Zealand, Turkey, Spain and Ireland. However, being a large studio, with hundreds of artists handling animation production, it has been challenging to arrange complex systems, data rooms and software at their homes.

The company has ensured that the business operates as normally as possible and their sales as well as content deliveries continue to happen without hassle through the extensive deployment of adequate relevant technology and equipment. They have also installed certain common portals for all employees to facilitate interaction as well as for monitoring the progress of various projects/ activities.

“The existing culture of intra-team and inter-team interaction and coordination throughout the company has proven to be a great advantage during a tough time like this. Channels of open communication have helped us resolve any issues without delays,” Jayakumar said.

The team is coping with the situation and is busy than usual, mentioned Jayakumar. “My schedule has been busier than before with plenty of calls and online meetings through the day,” added he. Virtual townhall team meetings, weekly mailers checking on everyone’s well-being as well as passing on useful information keeps the entire team connected and motivated, building a sense of community, keeping everyone’s spirits up.

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The Data Sciences division of the Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) India, has launched DMC Video+ (Dentsu Marketing Cloud Video+), a tool that provides an agnostic approach towards planning and buying on over-the-top (OTT) platforms.

DMC Video+ is the first holistic product catering to planning and buying OTT audiences within the ecosystem.

Speaking about the launch, Isobar South Asia Group MD Shamsuddin Jasani said, “The Indian OTT ecosystem is hyper-competitive and has attracted varying types of players, each of whom offers varied value propositions to consumers. This has created a somewhat fragmented ecosystem with no accurate measure of how brands should engage and activate these audiences. With a rapid increase in consumption of online content – primarily fueled by OTT Video, audio and gaming, the ecosystem suffers from the absence of a single source of truth when it comes to buying inventory from these platforms. The Dentsu Marketing Cloud (DMC) Video+ presents a unique solution to this problem by creating a single ecosystem to understand and buy these audiences in a seamless manner, limiting the rise of another walled garden ecosystem.”

With nearly 565 million internet subscribers and roughly 450 million smartphone users, OTT players have become the go-to platforms for consumption and distribution of content. Moreover, VOD (Video-on-Demand) consumption has been fuelled by COVID imposed lockdowns in India. 

With various reports showing around 25 to 30 per cent spike in viewership across the OTT platforms during this period, there’s an absence of a unified platform to understand OTT audiences and activate them for advertising. And here’s where DMC Video+ comes in.

“In an environment that is now heavily focused on reducing wastage, brands know they need to move budgets from linear TV and traditional advertising towards digital advertising driven by OTT. They, however, tend to play it conservatively when they aren’t sure exactly how much of a shift will achieve the best ROI. In the absence of transparency, unified insights and audience buying system for OTT consumers, there exist several inefficiencies within the ecosystem. The promise of the Dentsu Marketing Cloud (DMC) Video+ product is to plug this gap, thereby guiding brands on their journey of capitalising on audiences who are increasingly mobile and engaged in consuming high-quality production content on OTT rather than traditional video consumption of user-generated content,” added DAN Programmatic CEO and DAN South Asia chief data officer Gautam Mehra.

The tool has been launched under the umbrella of DMC Explore, the proprietary Audience Intelligence tool of the Data Sciences Division under its suite of products – the Dentsu Marketing Cloud (the overarching platform that houses DAN Data Labs). Through DMC Explore, clients are not only enabled to gain deep insights into the content consumption of audiences in the OTT ecosystem, but they can also activate selected segments for their campaigns.

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Disney+ Hotstar has commissioned an unprecedented 234 episodes of Cosmos-Maya’s hit animated series Selfie With Bajrangi. The multi-season deal will see Cosmos-Maya produce three series of 78 x 11’ episodes for Disney+ Hotstar which has 400 million viewers, eight million paying subscribers and additional library content from Disney+, making it the most prolific OTT platform in India both in terms of subscribers and content.

Selfie With Bajrangi, which has been running on Disney India’s Pay TV properties since September 2018, is aired daily on primetime slots of India’s Disney Channel and Disney Hungama. It recently became the first Indian animated kids’ series to feature on a leading general entertainment channel via Star Plus.

Selfie With Bajrangi’s launch on Disney+ Hotstar coincides with Disney+’s launch in India, and the show is being aired in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu languages.

Cosmos-Maya CEO Anish Mehta, said on the development: “Bajrangi has brought together Disney+ Hotstar and Cosmos-Maya for a multi-season contract and we couldn’t be more excited. An unheard of 234 half-hours of the show spread across three seasons will be aired on Disney+ Hotstar, with season two already live on the platform. This is the first highly popular kids’ domestic series that they have onboarded with a two-year vision to further increase its popularity. Selfie With Bajrangi has the ability to speak to audiences with its novel, yet relatable storytelling. It brings to the fore a very important message: that friendships built in the face of adversity last a lifetime.”

Selfie With Bajrangi is modeled on kids’ day to day lives and beautifully captures the nuances of Indian culture with relatable storylines. In the show, the protagonist Ankush’s life changes when he meets Bajrangi, the nine-year-old child version of the Indian God Hanuman in a contemporary setting, who no one but Ankush can see. Bajrangi accompanies Ankush everywhere and helps his buddy with his day to day problems. Together, they face the adversities life throws at them, in the process helping entertain and comfort the millions of kids who watch the show.

Cosmos-Maya is Asia’s kids’ animation studio with 18 series on air globally and a 60 per cent domestic market share in India.

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