Indian Media Magazine

Yesterday, Google announced the launch of Script Converter, a transliteration tool, which allows users to change the script of/to any of 17 languages, most of them Indic: Bengali, English, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

Who needs it? Well, probably many of us on the Internet and Mobile space in India, since our exposure to Indic scripts is still very limited, despite the best effort of several media and tools companies. I, for one, feel much more comfortable reading Hindi in an English script: it’s just too tedious for me to focus on long passages in a script (Devanagari) that I learned in school for eleven years, because my experience with the script has been rather limited since. I can read it, write it (without much confidence), but it irks me that it requires a concentrated effort. Perhaps, this is also why I feel that the Indic language efforts need all the support they can get. We were taught in school about Sanskrit, and how as the rigid language of the state, it didn’t evolve; eventually Hindi became the norm. Languages die, and usually, the script goes first.

If there’s one presentation from TedX Mumbai (disclosure below) that haunts me, it is Ganesh Devy’s moving presentation on languages in India:

“In 1961 census, there were 1652 mother tongues claimed in India. After 1971, the number of official languages was brought down to 108, officially making 1400 languages without any citizenship.”…”If we did not have the word, we would not have the world.”

What has been troubling me since, perhaps, is the thought that I’d like to leave you with: are we in the Indian digital space being short sighted? How democratic is the greatest of all democracies – the Internet? Is the audience for Indic languages just not there online or mobile, or is that because of the barriers to entry for a large part of our population are just too high? By not breaking down these barriers, are we conspirators?

And are we creating – to paraphrase Devy – a monolingual digital cut-off? Think about it.

Disclosure: My trip to and stay in Mumbai, and the attendance of the event was sponsored by TedXMumbai sponsors Cleartrip, though, in my personal capacity)

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Update:
Tushar Vyas, Director & CMO at SureWaves writes in to inform us that they are also “actively pursuing what can be called Spot TV opportunity i.e. local advertising and content insertion on Broadcast TV space at distribution points. SureWaves solution for Broadcasters allows seamless ad & content substitutions at MSO cable head-ends/ distribution points to pipe geo-targeted local ads or localized content within the national feeds. As you would know, Television is India is still largely analog – we have developed capability to address analog as well as digital systems. We are actively engaged with few leading broadcasters and MSO in field pilots. This is second solution from SureWaves after centrally managed digital Signage platform.”

Update: some interesting questions (via phone):

– How is the advertising being served at a local level? Are local ads being served on top of national level ads? Does regulation allow this?
– Is only remnant inventory being monetized by local advertising?
– What happens to advertising, which agencies have bought at a national level?

More questions? leave a comment, or mail nikhil@medianama.com

Earlier (29th April 2010): It’s been almost three years since we first read about Rediff Chairman and Managing Director Ajit Balakrishnan launching a new venture, seeking to “create a disruption in the TV industry using contemporary internet technologies.” VuBites, it appears, is it.

VuBites, set up as a separate company (VuBites India Pvt Ltd), addresses the television advertising business in India, and does two key things:

– Local Advertising In Cities: Keep in mind that local-city specific advertising or ad delivery does not exist in India, because broadcast and ad insertion takes place at a national level. While cable operators have run their own “channels” (often with pirated content), viewership has been slack, and advertising at a very small scale, often with neighborhood specific ads. TV channels distributed nationally attract more viewers, so the opportunity to run ads on them, hypothetically, is greater.

An implication of Cable TV in India becoming digital is that it can allow digital insertion of advertising on clean TV feeds. The business assumption here is that while for an advertiser, the cost of buying ads for a specific city is lower than a national campaign, the revenue – as a sum total of local advertising across cities – for a TV channel is higher than in case of a national campaign. This essentially broadens the advertiser base for a TV channel (greater competition, lower dependency), while also improving return on investment for an advertiser.

Source: Vubites

– Online Creation and Delivery of TV Ads: Vubites also allows advertisers to create an advertisement, buy a spot on TV in a city, and receive reports on delivery of the ad online. Online creation of video ads is not new: Jivox has had an Ad Builder for a few years now. This allows advertisers to reduce the cost of ad creation by using and editing stock video footage. Similarly, Vubites’ VuCreator also allows advertisers to create ads, but in broadcast quality, MPEG2 format. We’re not sure if VuCreator has free videos for usage, but the website does say that users can buy stock photos from their partners. VuBites allows the ease of buying spots using a previously aired campaign, much like the online space, as well as cancel campaigns.

However, it’s worth noting that not everything is digital or online: once a campaign has been booked, the user needs to send a signed hard copy of the Release Order before the deadline, for the activity to begin, and the company also retains the right to hold a campaign until a signed hard copy of the release order has been received. Do read their terms and conditions.

Both of these are seen as advantages of IPTV, which has failed to attract a mass audience in India, and lacks a sufficient base for location targeting on TV. Digital Cable can’t do personalized/behavioral targeting, which IPTV, with Internet-like analytics, can.

Competition: Amagi

Vubites will compete with another startup, called Amagi. Amagi’s service is already operational in Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Bangalore, covering Star News, and Aaj Tak and Headlines Today from TV Today. According to a tweet (screenshot) from Amagi’s Alistair D’Souza, “Amagi local ad insertion is started in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Mehsana and most of North Gujarat going up till Mt. Abu”. A client: Kanva Shirts (screenshot). From Amagi’s website, details on how it works:

Source: amagi

We wouldn’t be surprised if Vubites works the same way, apart from also enabling online creation and booking of advertising.

Futuregazing: An Auction Model?

One feature we might see emerge in the future, is the online integration of an auction system for buying ads on television, which Google had attempted (click here for a demo). That depends entirely on how the local advertising business scales, and whether it’s able to attract sufficient advertisers. One challenge that scale bring with it, is the content of the advertising might need to be approved before going on air: even now, VuBites’ terms and conditions clearly state: Any campaign/channel/ locality can be blocked basis the judgement of Vubites, broadcaster, the MSO or any relevant governing body. The user will be notified of the same as soon as possible.

Note: these are our observations. We’ve requested Rediff CEO Ajit Balakrishnan for an interview on the companys plans.

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Round 100, and telecom minister A. Raja has said in parliament that India’s 3G Auction is nearing its end – he expects it to last around two days; which would effectively mean “May day”. 17 days into the auction, the provisional winning price (if you can call it that anymore) for pan-India spectrum is Rs. 93.3 billion, with Mumbai as the most expensive circle, at Rs. 14.92 billion per slot, and Delhi close behind at Rs. 14.17 billion. Together, the two metros account for over 31 percent of the bids, in money terms. The pan-India price for spectrum is now 166.57 percent higher than the base price of Rs. 35 billion.

Day 17 again saw no change in price for 9 circles, and only Kolkata, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh saw excess demand in round 100. The government has disclosed that they’re raising the minimum activity requirement now to 90 percent.

2G Scam and Phone Tapping

Meanwhile, news reports allege that the Indian government has evidence of a scam in the arbitrary and opaque distribution of 2G spectrum in the country. The government apparently had tapped phones of several people, including Nira Radia, who runs several PR and consultancy companies, including Vaishnavi Corporate Consultants, Noesis Strategic Consulting Services, Vitcom Consulting and Neucom Consulting”, reports The Pioneer in Tapped and Trapped.

‘“From these conversations, it appears that Ms Nira Radia might have had some role with regards to the award of telecom licences. In a conversation, she guided a new telecom operator on the need to delay the inflow of funds from the overseas investor and not to give the impression to the Government that there has been any ‘windfall’ profit,” the letter added.

In the conversation details available with The Pioneer, Radia was talking about arranging huge money from abroad for Unitech Wireless, which is a major beneficiary in the spectrum scam.’

The CBDT denied conducting the tapping (inaccessible now). The Hindu also apparently put up a 14 document, and then pulled it, with the following statement:

A press release on the 2G scam was issued by AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa in Chennai on April 28, 2010. The Hindu is unable to verify the authenticity of a 14-page document purporting to be an official account of intercepted phone conversations and is, therefore, taking it off its website.

All those of you in possession of similar documents may have heard of WikiLeaks. Do also read about it at Wikipedia. Not that we’re encouraging you to use it, of course.

3G Auction Details

– Complete auction details for 29th April
– Daily auction reports for previous days: 28th April, 27th April, 26th April, 26th April, 24th April / 23rd April / 22nd April / 21st April / 20th April / 19th April/ 17th April / 16th April/ 15th April /  13th April/ 12th April/ 10th April / 9th April 2010

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Nokia has launched its Ovi Music Unlimited (OMU) service, alongwith plans to launch of its X2 handset in India in the third quarter of 2010. Following the Apple model of using the service to sell the device, OMU makes available to customers who buy a Nokia OMU enabled device like the X2, 4 million legal digital tracks, free for a year.

The Unlimited subscription model was first launched by Hungama with BSNL last year; Hungama.com was later launched separately at Rs. 99 per month. We haven’t been able to install the OMU software at first attempt, hence couldn’t ascertain whether Nokia also allows users to purchase a subscription; indications are, it is unlikely, which is disappointing and limiting.

The content available covers tracks from 19 genres, including Rock, Rap, Hip Hop, Pop, Bollywood, Sufi, Indipop, Indian Classical, Devotional, Ghazals, Malayalam, Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi and Bhojpuri, among others, in partnership with over 150 local music labels and publishers, including the Indian Music Industry (IMI), and “Hungama, which represents major labels including Yash Raj, Tseries, Eros; and SIMCA (South Indian Music Companies Association), amongst others.” That statement almost makes Hungama appear like an industry body.

What I find most interesting in the announcement, is the introduction of an element of portability, and customizations made for the Indian market: Nokia will allow OMU users to share tracks with other OMU users via Bluetooth. Additionally, users get to keep all their downloaded music forever. However, note that music can still not be written to a CD or transferred to those without an OMU subscription.

They also claim to have reduced the size of the Ovi client from 60 MB to 3MB (post installation on my PC, the software required 23 mb of space), allow multiple PC access to address issues of low PC penetration (frankly, given that this is Nokia that we are taking about, the approach should be “mobile first”), and expansion of search parameters to include actor, actress and movie names. The Indian music industry is largely around Bollywood and films.

What’s missing? In terms of localization, while Nokia has the software in several international languages, they don’t appear to have bothered with Indic scripts/language interface.

Related:

– Nokia’s Jasmeet Gandhi On Music Store, Competition & The Delay
– Nokia Music Store Goes Live In India: DRM Bound But Portable Music; Redeemable Coupons
– International Music Videos On Hungama; Why Download? EMI
– Hungama Launches ArtistAloud.com, A Platform For Independent Artists
– Online Music Stores: Bacardi Mixes With Hungama; AR Rahman Launches Store
– Hungama’s Music, Content Service: Unlimited At Rs. 99/month
– Geodesic Enters Bollywood Content Aggregation Space With FilmOrbit JV

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IPL3 is over and now it’s time to take stock of the commercial aspects of it. A total of 143 commercial brands advertised during IPL3, which is the second highest number after that of Season One. According to TAM Sports, for all India market in the CS 4+ category, the average TVR of the last 59 matches during IPL3 was 4.5 per cent, which is more than Season Two, but falls short of Season One.
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Hindustan Media Ventures Ltd (HMVL), one of India’s leading print media companies with publications such as ‘Hindustan’, has announced its IPO. The company plans to raise around Rs 300 crore through this IPO. Benoy Roychowdhury, Executive Director, Hindustan, shares more on the company’s growth plans.
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Cannes Lions 2010 has announced the jury members across the 12 categories. This year, there are 10 Indians in the jury list that includes prominent names such as Ramanuj Shastry of Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett’s KV ‘Pops’ Sridhar, Ravi Kiran of Starcom MediaVest, Sajjan Raj Kurup of Creativeland Asia and Elsie Nanji of Red Lion, among others. The 57th International Advertising Festival will be held on June 20-26, 2010.
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Shams Kabir has joined Star India as Head of Media buying and Presentation. Prior to joining Star India, Kabir was with Oxigen Services India, where he was Senior Vice President, Marcom. He has around 16 years of experience and has worked in companies such as Mindshare, Madison and Media Direction, among others.
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Purple Focus, a full service advertising and marketing communication solutions agency, has undertaken a restructuring programme. In line with the process of reinventing, the company has unveiled a new brand identity and positioning. The agency has also beefed up its team, besides investing heavily in creating processes.
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Yes Bank is banking on its business growth with the objective to achieve a balance sheet size of Rs 150,000 crore, a pan-India branch network of 750 from the current 150, with a human capital base of 12,000 by 2015. Going further, the bank also looks to ramp up lending to retail clients.
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