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Executive Dossier

‘Watch out for Zee TV, the war has just begin’: Sandeep Goyal CEO Zee Network

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Rediffusion DY&R president Sandeep Goyal has taken up a challenge not many people would have at this particular juncture. Come June, he will be heading the erstwhile shooting star Zee Telefilms as CEO. His mandate from chairman Subhash Chandra: shoot down Star and claim the numero uno perch it currently occupies from it for Zee.

 

This at a time when it is raging through controversies aplenty. It has been lagging in the viewership stakes with channels such as Star TV and Sony Entertainment surging ahead. Analysts have criticised its wild expansionist urges. More than that there are the charges of the alleged siphoning of funds to the Essel group to acquire equity in other entertainment companies such as B4U and ABCL.

 

Other charges that have been hurled at Zee include those of alleged share price manipulation in the early days along with cornered bull Ketan Parekh. Additionally, Zee Telefilms is also facing shareholders‘ ire as the share collapsed to below Rs 100 from a high of Rs 1,600. (The scrip closed at Rs 106.85 today as buying interest revived on the counter).

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Clearly the 38-year-old English literature gold medalist from Punjab University and MBA, who comes from a family of bureaucrats and has 15 years of advertising industry experience under his belt with agencies like HTA, Trikaya Grey, Mudra and Rediffusion, has his task cut out for him. But Goyal does not let this put him down.
“I am going into the job optimistically,” he says determinedly .

 

Goyal had once told a magazine: “If you play, you must win. Playing just for the sake of playing is no fun. Success is not a destination but a way of life and it does not happen incidentally. You have to work at it.” Indiantelevision.com‘s Anil Wanvari spoke with Goyal a little after WPP boss Martin Sorrell paid a visit to Rediffusion DY&R‘s office in Mumbai.

 

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Excerpts from the interview: 

 

What will be your immediate priorities?

I want to figure out the business first. Get Zee back to the No 1 spot. That‘s the responsibility I have been charged with. And I am optimistic about what I can do..

 

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What are the problems plaguing Zee Telefilms today?

It‘s a little too early for me to comment on that as I haven‘t yet got into the job. But from a media buyer‘s point of view I can say that it was going through a bad patch. I have been associated with the company as their advertising agency for their game show POW. Zee TV was looking like a Chapter XI case around six months but now it is coming back. Three of its programmes are in the Top 10 as against nothing a while ago. Out of the Top 30 programmes, 50 per cent are from the Zee stable. The problems it was facing have been remedied and the channel is coming back.
 

 

There‘s an allegation that the top management‘s job at Zee TV has been going through a revolving door with several of them being shunted out at regular intervals based on the alleged whims of chairman Subhash Chandra even though they may have delivered on their assignments. How have you secured yourself?

I don‘t buy this. I am a professional manager. I believe that if as a professional manager you deliver on your targets your employer has no choice but to retain your services. The company has been restructured as per AT Kearney‘s recommendations and even my being brought in is part of those recommendations. I am being brought in with all good intentions to deliver and I will do so.

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Zee Telefilms is allegedly riddled with politics with power groupings all over the place? How will you be able to cope with this?

Every company has lots of politics. I have been through reasonably difficult times and have turned around organisations which looked very troubled. I am leaving Rediffusion DY&R not when it is down but when it is doing very well..

 

Why did you take up the challenge?

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It‘s a much larger canvas for me. Looking after the various Zee constituencies. Its 15 channels. It‘s a new industry for me. Advertising is all about understanding the consumer and connecting with him, and I have been doing this for the past 15 years. You have to understand the consumer well.

 

I see my job as an extension of what I have been doing so far. It‘s a different format, the strokes are different, but the concepts are the same. Additionally, I have been behind more than 400 commercials over the past 15 years. Those were 30 second commercials. Soaps, series are of a 30 minute format. Both have to grab and hold viewer attention. Hence, it‘s something I am quite familiar with.

 

But you will be taking up your assignment at the most difficult time with Star roaring ahead with new programmes and Sony Entertainment also being all charged up to fight back with the launch of Kkusum from the Balaji stable?

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Star is not really roaring these days. Its growth engine was KBC. I helped Star launch KBC. Nobody knew that it would be the driver that it became. But today it is not that any more, it is going down. Because of KBC the soaps around it picked up audiences. It is however taking a beating today. We‘ll see how long the other shows hold up.

 

Television is not consistent; otherwise you would have channels producing consistent hits all the time. Star is launching Ji Mantriji and Zee TV is doing PradhanMantri. Will both work or will one of them? Or will both fail. Nobody knows. Nobody has had a consistent record so far. So, who knows what awaits Star around the corner?

 

How many people are aware that Zee TV‘s “Chandan Ka Palna” airing at the same time as KBC has managed a TRP of 7, which is equal to that attained by KBC?

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As for Sony, it does not seem to have gone too far so far. You say it is introducing soaps such as Kkusum. I would like to see to how long the tea-jerker formula lasts out. And how long somebody can replicate success. It too will run its course. Interest in them will wane like it has for KBC.

 

You have to watch out for Zee TV, the war has just begun. And we are pretty well armed.

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Executive Dossier

Game on, fame on as Good Game hunts India’s first global gaming star

New reality show puts Rs 1 crore prize and global spotlight on India’s gaming talent.

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MUMBAI: Game faces on, pressure high India’s gaming ambitions are levelling up. Good Game, billed as the world’s first as-live global gaming reality show, has officially launched in India with a bold mission: to crown the country’s first Global Gaming Superstar.

Blending esports with mainstream entertainment, the show brings together competitive gaming, creativity and on-camera performance in a format that tests more than just joystick skills. Contestants will be judged on gameplay, screen presence and their ability to perform under pressure, reflecting how gaming has evolved from pastime to profession and pop culture currency.

Fronting the show are three high-profile ambassadors: actor and entrepreneur Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cricket star Rishabh Pant, and gaming creator Ujjwal Chaurasia. The winner will take home Rs 1 crore ($100,000) among the largest prize pools for any Indian reality show along with the chance to represent India on a global stage.

Backed by a planned annual investment of up to Rs 100 crore, Good Game is also courting brand partners, promising a minimum reach of 500 million among India’s core youth audience. The creators position the show as a bridge between entertainment and interactive culture, offering long-format content, community engagement and commercial scale.

Auditions are now open to Indian citizens aged 18 and above, inviting amateur and professional gamers, creators and performers alike. Shortlisted candidates will be called for in-person auditions in Mumbai on 14 and 15 February, and in Delhi on 28 February and 1 March 2026.

With big money, big names and even bigger ambition, Good Game signals a shift in how India views gaming not just as play, but as performance, profession and prime-time spectacle.

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Digital

SpotDraft hires new CMO and CFO to fuel global push for its AI contract platform

Alon Waks and Amit Sharma join as SpotDraft accelerates growth across key markets

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INDIA: SpotDraft has strengthened its senior ranks as it gears up for faster global expansion, naming Alon Waks as chief marketing officer and Amit Sharma as chief financial officer. The appointments follow the firm’s $54 million Series B round earlier this year and mark a push to scale across the Americas, EMEA and India.

The AI-powered contract-lifecycle-management platform has posted 100 per cent year-on-year growth in customer acquisition, counting Apollo.io, IPSY, Mixpanel, Oyster and Panasonic among its global clients. The firm processes more than one million contracts annually, with volumes up 173 per cent and nearly 50,000 monthly active users.

Waks, a veteran of Kustomer, Bizzabo, CreatorIQ, LivePerson and ZoomInfo, will steer global marketing and category positioning as legal teams adopt AI-driven tools. Sharma, who has led finance across scaling tech firms since 2016, will guide financial strategy, investor relations and market expansion.

Both hires aim to sharpen SpotDraft’s bid for a larger slice of the fast-growing legal-tech market, expected to exceed $63 billion by 2032. Co-founder and chief executive Shashank Bijapur said the company is focused on scaling go-to-market operations in the Americas, deepening leadership in EMEA, and accelerating AI capabilities for general counsels and legal-operations leaders.

Clients report shorter deal cycles and better alignment between legal and business teams. “What used to take weeks now happens in days,” said Abnormal Security senior legal operations manager Susan Koenig. DeepL head of legal operations André Barrow, said SpotDraft has helped reframe legal “from a cost centre to a generator of revenue”.

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Executive Dossier

Outdoor Ads Get Smarter as LOC8 Shifts OOH from Visibility to Attention

AI, dwell time and real-world vision are rewriting the rules of what outdoor ads can do.

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MUMBAI: Out-of-home ads were once the wallflowers of marketing seen by everyone, noticed by few. But in an age where attention has become the world’s most fought-over currency, even billboards are getting a brain upgrade. Enter LOC8, OSMO’s AI-powered attention engine, quietly reshaping the old OOH playbook by measuring not just who could have looked at an ad, but who actually did. The shift is subtle but seismic: impressions are out, impact is in and data, not gut instinct, is calling the shots.

In a landscape where marketers question every rupee spent outdoors, LOC8 is turning lampposts, flyovers and traffic islands into precision-mapped attention laboratories. By crunching dwell time, visibility zones, perceptual size and real-world obstructions, the platform is dragging OOH into a future where creativity meets computer vision and where the best ideas aren’t just eye-catching, but eye-measured. From automotive facelifts to FMCG novelty and real estate trust-building, the message is clear, outdoor has stopped shouting and started listening. Indian Television Dot Com explores more about it in an Interview interview with OSMO co-founder Nipun Arora.

On how OSMO is shifting outdoor advertising from a visibility-led medium to an attention-led one through LOC8. 

Traditional OOH has long been measured by visibility and impressions i.e how many people could see an ad. OSMO, through its proprietary AI platform LOC8, is shifting that narrative more towards likelihood of being noticed. Using computer vision and machine learning, LOC8 analyzes real-world video data to measure visibility zones, obstructions, dwell time and perceptual size; bringing precision to how attention is quantified outdoors. It moves the focus from mere impressions to quality of impressions, making OOH a data-verified, attention-led medium comparable to digital in accountability. 

On how marketers can use LOC8’s dwell-time, visibility and perception insights to craft more effective, emotionally resonant OOH campaigns. 

LOC8 helps brands understand how people truly experience outdoor media how long they look, from what distance, and under what conditions. By quantifying dwell time, visibility duration, and perceptual size; marketers can plan campaigns that align with real human viewing behavior. This empowers creative and strategy teams to design emotionally resonant storytelling where messaging, visual hierarchy and placement are optimized for how people actually notice and process OOH creatives. 

About what LOC8 has revealed through campaigns like Renault Triber and Namaste India on how categories such as auto, FMCG and real estate use attention metrics to drive outcomes. 

Each category uses attention data differently but all share one common goal: to convert outdoor visibility into measurable engagement. 

• Automotive | Renault Triber

For the new Renault Triber facelift, bold creative met data-led planning through LOC8. By analyzing on-ground video data, LOC8 measured real audience attention across placements factoring in visibility zones, obstructions, traffic speed and perceptual size. This enabled Renault to identify corridors that delivered maximum reach, saliency and engagement, optimizing media efficiency and ROI.  

• FMCG | Namaste India

In OOH, innovation is the hook and assets are the bait. But bait often hides the hook. With Loc8’s attention metrics, we ensured the bait wasn’t a hurdle, rather it became the perfect stage for innovation to deliver its full impact! The insight proved that creative novelty, when validated by attention data, drives deeper engagement and measurable brand lift. 

• Real Estate

For luxury and real estate campaigns targeting HNI/UHNI audiences, attention patterns differ especially between front and rear passengers, who are often the core audience segment for premium sites. LOC8’s ability to distinguish rear vs. front visibility plays a critical role here. It helps identify sites that offer longer viewing windows and stronger perceptual dominance from the rear seat where decision-makers are most likely seated making it a key differentiator for premium and trust-led categories. Together, these insights prove that auto optimizes for impact, FMCG for recall, and real estate for trust visibility showing how attention metrics adapt to category goals while ensuring measurable outcomes.

On how attention analytics will shape the future of brand storytelling and media planning as OOH becomes more digitised and data-driven.  

 As outdoor digitizes, attention analytics will inform not just where to advertise but how stories are told in public spaces. This evolution transforms OOH from a static broadcast channel into a dynamic attention ecosystem, where creativity is optimized through evidence-based insight.

On how LOC8’s data-led framework helps marketers quantify OOH impact and make outdoor a more accountable, ROI-driven medium. 

LOC8 bridges the gap between intuition and evidence. By quantifying metrics like visibility duration, attention opportunity index, and visual saliency rank, it allows brands to benchmark site performance and justify investment. This data-led approach brings transparency, comparability and ROI measurement to a medium historically driven by perception. 

On how OSMO ensures AI and computer vision enhance creativity rather than reduce it to numbers.

OSMO believes that technology should enhance creativity, not overshadow it. LOC8’s attention models reveal what naturally draws the human eye helping creative teams refine design cues, contrast, and visual hierarchy for greater impact. By merging art and science, LOC8 empowers creativity with intelligence. 

About the creative best practices and design cues LOC8 has uncovered regarding what truly captures consumer attention outdoors. 

LOC8’s visual cognition analysis has surfaced clear patterns across campaigns:

• High contrast and minimal messaging outperform cluttered designs.

• Motion cues draw significantly longer dwell times.

• The first two seconds are critical, creatives must establish focus instantly.

• Contextual alignment between the creative and its environment increases attention by over 30%.

These learnings offer a scientific foundation for creative effectiveness helping brands design OOH that’s visually magnetic and emotionally memorable. 

On how attention metrics will integrate into omnichannel planning where OOH, digital and social work together for unified brand impact. 

Attention can become the unifying KPI across OOH, digital and social to creates seamless storytelling continuity, where outdoor triggers digital engagement. The future of omnichannel planning lies in attention-led integration ensuring that campaigns don’t just reach audiences everywhere but truly capture and hold their focus.
 

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