MAM
Hindi GECs make a comeback; Star plus continues to lead
MUMBAI: The Hindi general entertainment channels (GECs) have roared back in week 18 (28 April-4 May 2013) of the Tam ratings roster. Last week, Max had taken them to the cleaners by registering a 32 gross rating points lead over leader Star Plus. But in week 18 Max shed some points and Star Plus gained nine points to come level with it with 224 GRPs.
As per TAM data (HSM including 5 new LC1 markets, C&S, 4+) sourced from a channel, the new Star Plus talent hunt-cum-reality
show India‘s Dancing Superstar notched up a 2.6 TVR even as fiction shows such as Ek Hazaaron Mein Meri Behna Hai and Diya Aur Baati Hum showed improvements in their ratings from 1.2 to 1.4 and from 3.7 to 4 TVR respectively.
Despite shaving 16 GRPs, Zee TV continued to occupy the second spot on the Hindi GEC charts with 175 GRPs. Zee TV‘s top performer was the fiction series Sapne Suhane Ladakpan Ke (it scored a TVR of 3) which also occupies the No 2 spot amongst all Hindi fiction shows. Its reality talent hunt India‘s Best Dramebaaz showed a growth in viewers on Sunday from 1.4 to 2.4 TVR even as it delivered lower ratings of 1.9 on 4 May Saturday (2.4 last week). Most of the other Zee TV shows had ratings being nibbled off them.
Colors added a couple of GRPs to close the week with 166 GRPs (last week 164). It aired a special event Sitaare Zameen Par which notched up a 1.2 TVR even as fiction show Sasural Simar Ka went up by marginally.
Sony too gained four GRPs at 154 on the back of a good showing of its non-fiction shows such as CID Chote Heroes and CID Mahaepisode (1.8 TVR), CID (2.2 vs 2.0), Crime Patrol (2.0 vs 1.8) and Comedy Circus (1.5 vs 1.2). Its fiction shows either stagnated or dipped marginally during the week.
Sab gained six GRPs as it ended the week at 131 GRPs. Its leading fiction show Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah inched up marginally (2.9 vs 2.8) and Chidiya Ghar gained (1.5 vs 1.4).
Meanwhile, Star India‘s second rung Hindi GEC Life OK closed the week with 102 GRPs (last week 101).
Sahara One with 15 GRPs (last week 20) remained at the bottom of the GEC heap.
Hindi movies seemed to have become a hit with viewers last week as viewers sought entertainment other than cricket and drama series, with channels such as Zee Cinema (110 vs 105) and Movies OK (60 vs 52) showing healthy gains.
Brands
Naveen Kokkanti promoted to director – devOps at Nasdaq
Tech leader steps up to steer innovation and modernise systems
BENGALURU: Naveen Kokkanti has been elevated to director – devOps at Nasdaq, marking a defining moment in his 14 year journey through the fast evolving world of digital transformation.
Based in Bengaluru, Kokkanti moves into the role after a short but impactful stint as lead devOps engineer at the global exchange operator. In his new position, he will focus on driving innovation, sharpening operational efficiency and reinforcing the organisation’s technology backbone.
For Kokkanti, the promotion reflects more than a change in title. It crowns over a decade of building, migrating and modernising enterprise systems across some of the biggest names in technology and consulting.
Before joining Nasdaq in 2025, he spent four years at Deloitte Consulting as senior consultant, where he worked extensively on large scale cloud and data transformations. His work ranged from migrating legacy data applications to AWS and implementing unity catalog governance frameworks, to designing multi cloud Databricks lakehouse strategies. He was also part of Deloitte’s Databricks alliance core team, contributing to go to market initiatives and publishing technical whitepapers on migration and architecture best practices.
Earlier roles at Virtusa and Infosys saw him lead cloud migrations, design secure infrastructure environments and manage enterprise grade AWS ecosystems. At Infosys, he led a team of engineers while overseeing everything from VPC architecture and IAM policies to disaster recovery, security hardening and cost optimisation.
His career began with hands on infrastructure and support roles at Micro Focus, Cerner Corporation and Dell Technologies, where he developed a strong foundation in systems engineering, virtualisation and enterprise IT operations.
Across roles, a consistent theme emerges. Kokkanti thrives at the intersection of cloud, data and governance. From Terraform and AWS to Databricks and enterprise devOps frameworks, his skillset reflects the growing demand for leaders who can translate complex infrastructure into scalable, secure and business ready platforms.
At Nasdaq, that blend of technical depth and leadership experience is set to play a key role as the organisation continues to evolve its global technology infrastructure. For Kokkanti, the promotion is not just about moving up. It is about building forward.
