Brands
Century Ply earmarks Rs 4.8 crore for marketing for Nesta
KOLKATA: Kolkata-headquartered Century Ply, which had earmarked marketing spend of Rs 1.75 crore for its modular kitchen brand Nesta last year, has increased the spend to Rs 4.8 crore in the current fiscal of 2014-15. The move comes on the back of expansion plans.
The turnover from the brand Nesta is likely to be in the range of Rs 27 crore to Rs 30 crore in FY 15 as compared to Rs 6 crore achieved in the last fiscal believes the company, which is looking at opening 27 Nesta stores by the end of the current fiscal.
In order to strengthen its presence in other markets, the company is likely to take various brand building activities. It has earmarked around 24 per cent of the marketing spend on the franchise activities and the other advertisements would focus on print, television, radio and hoarding media.
Recently, Century Ply launched its new advertising campaign for the home lifestyle retail brand, called ‘Khushiyon Ka Rangmanch’ which was conceptualised by DDB Mudra.
“We usually advertise in the print media but since we are launching new stores, we will be focusing on engaging with customers through activities. We will be spending a lot more on the launch as we enter an aggressive phase of growth,” said Nesta CEO Sumit Dutta and added, “We are shoring up our communication with robust 360 degree marketing plans.”
Nesta Modular Kitchens complement the well accepted Nesta Furniture which was launched around two years ago. “We revamped its brand identity with the launch of the new advertisement ‘Khushiyon Ka Rangmanch,’” he highlighted.
Nesta has stores in Kolkata and Bengaluru, spread over 5, 000 square feet (sq ft) offering home lifestyle products to the audiences. The Nesta modular kitchen plans to create milestones by launching stores in Guwahati, Patna, Siliguri, Durgapur, Asansol and Hyderabad among other locations by the end of the year, further said Dutta.
Century Ply aims to cater to the audience pan-India through its 111 stores planned by 2015.
Brands
IICT partners with Gativedhi to bring studio production tools to students
New MoU lets students explore AI-driven production pipelines for AVGC-XR
MUMBAI: The Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) has teamed up with Gativedhi Technologies to give students a front-row seat to modern studio production. The collaboration will integrate Gativedhi’s AI-powered production intelligence platform, Shotrack, into academic programmes, letting students experience the workflow systems used by animation, VFX and gaming studios.
Under the MoU, faculty, students and researchers will get hands-on access to Shotrack through beta programmes, pilot deployments and academic evaluations. This will allow them to explore simulated production pipelines, understand asset management, track tasks and monitor schedules, essentially seeing how complex projects come together behind the scenes.
Shotrack is designed to tackle a key industry challenge: when multiple studios work on the same project, differing internal systems often create bottlenecks, slow approvals and complicate version control. The platform provides a unified production environment, enabling smoother collaboration across distributed teams while generating operational insights and predictive analytics to optimise crew allocation, forecast schedule risks and manage costs.
The collaboration also opens doors to Gativedhi’s wider ecosystem. Upcoming tools include StudioTrack, for studio operations management covering budgeting, recruitment and IT infrastructure, and WorkTrack, which measures workflow efficiency and team productivity across industries.
IICT plans to embed these tools into programmes covering animation pipelines, VFX workflows, gaming production and media project management. Students will also benefit from guest lectures, masterclasses, workshops, internships and research projects that connect academic learning with real-world studio practices.
IICT CEO Vishwas Deoskar, said the partnership provides “An environment where production pipeline tools can be explored, tested and refined while students gain insight into how large-scale productions are organised.”
Gativedhi Technologies founder & CEO Senthil Kumar added, “This collaboration introduces students to real-world studio management tools and helps us improve our platform with academic feedback.”
With Shotrack in classrooms, India’s future animators, VFX artists and gaming producers will get a taste of studio life long before they step into one.
