MAM
DCMN expands insights capabilities in India; onboards Akshay Kapur
Mumbai: The growth marketing partner for digital brands DCMN has announced the expansion of its insights capabilities in India. To help oversee the new expansion, DCMN has brought Akshay Kapur on board.
Based out of Gurgaon, Kapur joins DCMN from audience insights and analytics leader Nielsen, where he spent close to four years working with clients including Pernod Ricard India, DSM, Dabur, Reckitt Benckiser, and GSK.
With ad spend set to cross the Rs one lakh crore mark this year in India alone, brands have never been more aware of the need to invest their budgets in the right audiences and campaigns that will help them drive real growth.
DCMN’s insights solutions are built to eliminate guess-work from a campaign, with capabilities including:
Target group analysis: Helping brands gain a true understanding of their audiences’ socio-demographics, needs, interests, media behavior and drivers for using a specific product or service. From there, marketing teams can better adapt their messaging and campaigns to appeal to these particular demographics.
Ad concept testing: Allowing brands to see which out of a selection of creative ad concepts is the most impactful and will resonate the most with consumers. This ensures businesses are getting the most bang for their buck before launching into the costly production process.
Brand tracking: Measuring metrics such as brand awareness, consideration, usage and loyalty, among others. This is especially helpful to measure before and after a specific campaign, allowing businesses to measure upswing in key branding metrics and understand how successful a campaign really is.
“Performance metrics can only give you so much insight into how well an advertising campaign has performed,” said DCMN country head India Bindu Balakrishnan. “Our clients are increasingly focused on building brand salience and want to know what impact a campaign has had on more nuanced awareness metrics like likeability and brand recognition. These are the questions our Insights product is designed to help answer.”
“Having this overview of both sides of the coin – i.e. both the performance and broader awareness metrics – gives a fuller picture of a marketing campaign’s impact and is invaluable for charting a brand’s growth,” he further added.
To date, DCMN has worked with hundreds of businesses to help them make better strategic decisions with data-based insights, including for unicorn eSports and mobile gaming platform Mobile Premier League, and leading global caller ID app Truecaller.
Brands
Trump announces $300bn Texas oil refinery with Reliance, calls it the biggest in US history
First new US refinery in 50 years planned at Brownsville port with Reliance
WASHINGTON: The United States may soon see the first brand-new oil refinery built on its soil in half a century.
Donald Trump announced a proposed $300 billion refinery project in Texas, calling it a landmark moment for American energy production and jobs.
Posting on Truth Social on 10 March, Trump said the facility would be built at the Port of Brownsville and developed by a company called America First Refining, with major investment from India’s Reliance Industries.
The announcement frames the project as a centrepiece of the administration’s push for “energy dominance”, with Trump claiming it would deliver thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity to South Texas.
If realised, the plant would mark the first all-new major refinery constructed in the United States since the 1970s. In recent decades, oil companies have largely chosen to expand existing facilities rather than build new ones, citing high costs, regulatory hurdles and environmental scrutiny.
Trump described the proposed investment as the “biggest in US history”, positioning it as proof that policy changes such as streamlined permits and lower taxes are drawing large-scale energy investments back into the country.
The refinery is planned for the Port of Brownsville, a strategic Gulf Coast location that provides easy access to shipping routes and export markets.
A key partner in the project is Reliance Industries, controlled by billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani. The company already runs the world’s largest refining complex in Jamnagar, India, making it one of the most experienced operators in large-scale petroleum processing.
The Texas venture would mark a significant step for the group into America’s domestic refining sector, potentially strengthening industrial ties between the US and India.
The proposed refinery is being promoted as a next-generation facility capable of processing American shale oil while maintaining high environmental standards. Trump said it would be “the cleanest refinery in the world”, although the specific technologies behind that claim have not yet been detailed.
Industry observers also note that the $300 billion figure is unusually large for a refinery project, and analysts are waiting for more clarity on whether the number reflects total construction costs, long-term infrastructure investment, or broader economic impact estimates.
As of 11 March, Reliance Industries had not publicly confirmed the investment size or the structure of its involvement.
For now, the announcement has sparked equal parts excitement and curiosity in energy markets. If the plan moves from promise to pouring concrete, the refinery could reshape the Gulf Coast energy landscape, and reopen a chapter in American refining that has been quiet for nearly fifty years.
