MAM
Vikatan Group picks Pravin Menon as national ad sales head
MUMBAI: Vikatan Group has assigned the responsibilities of national head-ad sales to Pravin Menon.
Menon joins in from Worldwide Media where he was working as GM (South) – ad sales.
He will report to Vikatan Group MD B Srinivasan.
Menon said, “Yes I have joined Vikatan Group. My first concourse will be the print diving and then the online print media.”
Menon brings in over 17 years of experience in the ad sales and marketing industry. He had joined Worldwide Media in May 2007. Prior to joining WWM, he was WWM India Regional sales head for over two years. He had joined Times Group in 1998.
MAM
Sameer Nair shares heartfelt note as he exits Applause Entertainment
After nine years building the streamer’s content engine, one of India’s best-known TV men is moving on
MUMBAI: Sameer Nair is out. The chief executive of Applause Entertainment, the content studio backed by Kumar Mangalam Birla’s media empire, has announced his departure after nearly nine years at the helm, closing the chapter on one of Indian entertainment’s more quietly consequential careers.
Nair, who built Applause from the ground up in its current avatar, oversaw a slate that spanned Indian originals and international adaptations, threading together a hub-and-spoke business model that partnered with streaming platforms, broadcasters and production houses alike. The results were uneven, as they always are in content, but the ambition was not.
In a post on LinkedIn, Nair was generous to his outgoing patron. He thanked Birla for being an “inspirational boss and a great patron of the arts,” and signed off with a cheerful “Au Revoir” and a promise to remain Applause’s biggest cheerleader. Whether that sentiment survives the next chapter remains to be seen.
No successor has been named. Applause Entertainment did not immediately comment.
Nair built the machine. Now someone else has to run it — and in a streaming market that is simultaneously consolidating and convulsing, that is no small ask.
