International digital marketing company Digitas has partnered with Solutions to enter the digital marketing sector in India. Digitas is owned by global advertising major Publicis Groupe. The new entity will be called Solutions Digitas. Digital marketing was not just online marketing and India is an upcoming market for digital marketing. Digitas will also introduce Prodigious digital production that manages the technology end of digital marketing for clients such as GM & P&G.
The Anil Ambani group company is in advanced talks with France Telecom for a branding, marketing and franchisee agreement. The company plans to launch the brand by the second quarter of FY09, according to sources close to the development. Initially, the Orange may be launched on RCom's CDMA network -- spanning across 23,000 towns and 5 lakh villages in India -- and later extended to its 8 GSM circles. The Indian company has a total of 44.5 million subscribers in India.
The fee that TV channels pay to independent cable operators and the multi-system operators is set to go up by 40-50 per cent. The market for carriage fee charged by cable operators to distribute satellite television channels is on fire.A plethora of new TV channels have been launched and are jostling for space on the already choked analogue cable pipe. Nearly 330 channels are chasing bandwidth that can accommodate barely 80 channels.
Cola wars are pass, it's things like mobile phone services that are the real competition for Coke products, said Neville Isdell, chairman and chief operating officer of Coca-Cola, the world's largest beverage company. In India, strategy is no longer about competing with global rival PepsiCo or other local soft drink brands. Instead, it's about influencing consumer choice away from such purchases as rock-bottom pre-paid mobile cards to buying a Coke product.
Indian operators offering BlackBerry services, top executives of Canadian telco Research in Motion (RIM), the company that owns the brand, security agencies and officials of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) are expected to meet on March 14 to answer the concerns of security agencies in a bid to prevent having BlackBerry services terminated after the March-end deadline.
Private airports at Bangalore and Hyderabad have proposed heavy user development fees. The UDF is much higher compared to leading airports in the world.
State-owned Mahangar Telephone Nigam's (MTNL) ambitious drive to become a major player in the internet protocol TV (IPTV) services sector is facing a roadblock. IPTV is a technology that uses telephone lines to provide TV programming to viewers.
A country liquor manufacturer is set to launch the Radisson brand in Ranchi.
With 18 advertising deals in its kitty, NDTV Imagine determinedly chases the Rs 300 crore (Rs 3-billion) plus revenue target. In the latest TAM report (4 years plus viewers in cable and satellite homes in the Hindi-speaking markets) the channel shares the number three slot with Sony, ahead of Sahara, Star One, Sab and 9X.
Greycells 18 will launch an interactive channel called Topper to assist students in their class 10 and class 12 board exams.
RComm will test launch its direct to home services Big TV this week, which would include some niche channels that are currently not available in India.
Delhi Metro Rail link will make commuting to Delhi's new airport a mere 21-minute run. Plans also include check in counters at the metro's stations.
IPL is all set to auction the players, following the bidding for teams by corporates. Apart from being a huge money churning excercise IPL promises on being entertaining too.
Alliance Lumiere, owned by NDTV Imagine, the entertainment company of NDTV, is all set to launch an international film channel. The films will be distributed in India and abroad. They will also be marketed through DVDs and VCDs for private viewing.
RCom had recently received spectrum in 13 circles under the new cross over technology policy, in which a code division multiple access operator can also operate GSM services with the same licence. IT operates GSM in the remaining circles.
The Vigilance Commission has asked DoT to justify its decisions regarding spectrum allocation to GSM operators.
RComm has decided to raise the retirement age of its employees from 58 to 65 years. This move is seen as part of its expansion plan and difficulty of recruiting sufficient staff.
Overall, the survey shows that salary increases across industries at 14.8 per cent are roughly the same as last year (14.5 per cent).
Launch will be under separate brand name
In spite of the criticism that Bennett, Coleman's Private Treaties division, which swaps advertising space in its newspapers for minor equity in small and medium enterprises, attracts, these print media companies are gearing up to launch their versions of the department.
