iWorld
Syntel Telecom rebrands as Syntel by Arvind
Mumbai: Syntel Telecom, an ICT company, has announced its rebranding to Syntel by Arvind. This significant change marks a new era for the Pune-based company, which started its journey as a telecommunication product manufacturer owned by the Arvind Group. The rebranding includes a fresh new logo and a revitalised identity, reflecting the company’s evolution and expansion over the years.
The new identity, Syntel by Arvind, is more than just a name change. It represents a blend of our rich history and our aspirations for the future, said Syntel by Arvind CEO Paresh Shetty. “The name ‘Syntel’ reflects synergy and technology – two driving forces that define our approach in today’s fast-paced world. This rebranding is a testament to our ongoing efforts to innovate and deliver cutting-edge solutions and products to our customers.”
Paresh added, “It’s giving me joy to share our new identity which not only honours our rich legacy of Arvind but also aligns with our vision for the future, as we continue to expand our product lines and solutions to meet the evolving needs of our customers and this rebranding to Syntel by Arvind signifies our commitment to innovation and growth. As we embark on this exciting new chapter, we remain deeply rooted in the principles that have guided us for over decades. Our commitment to our customers, partners, and employees remains unwavering as we continue to drive forward with renewed energy and vision.”
Founded in 1994, Syntel launched its first EPABX system under the brand name NEOS. Since then, the company has grown into a renowned name in the ICT industry, boasting a robust portfolio that includes both product manufacturing and solution provision.
Today, Syntel by Arvind operates in two primary segments: products and solutions. The product division includes security and surveillance systems under the SNEOS brand and enterprise communication solutions under the NEOS brand, these brands exemplify the company’s expertise in creating high-quality, reliable products tailored to modern business needs. On the other hand, the solutions division of Syntel by Arvind offers end-to-end solutions in enterprise communication, network infrastructure, audio-visual system integration and security & surveillance, ensuring comprehensive support for diverse business requirements.
The rebranding event, held at the company’s headquarters in Pune, showcased the new logo and identity, symbolising Syntel by Arvind’s dedication to delivering cutting-edge technology and exceptional customer service. “The new logo embodies this transformation, capturing the essence of both our heritage and our progressive outlook, it stands as a beacon of our enduring promise to deliver quality and value, while also embracing modernity and technological advancement,” said Syntel by Arvind COO Sandeep Kerulkar.
eNews
How short, addictive story videos quietly colonised the Indian smartphone
A landmark Meta-Ormax study of 2,000 viewers reveals a format that is growing fast, paying slowly and consumed almost entirely in secret
CALIFORNIA, MUMBAI: India has a new entertainment habit, and it arrived without anyone really noticing. Micro dramas, those short, cliffhanger-driven episodic stories built for the smartphone screen, have quietly embedded themselves into the daily routines of millions of Indians, discovered not by design but by algorithmic accident, watched not in living rooms but in bedrooms, on commutes and in the five minutes before sleep.
That, in essence, is the finding of a sweeping new audience study released by Meta and media insights firm Ormax Media at Meta’s inaugural Marketing Summit: Micro-Drama Edition. Titled “Micro Dramas: The India Story” and based on 2,000 personal interviews and 50 depth interviews conducted between November 2025 and January 2026 across 14 states, it is the most comprehensive study of the category in India to date, and its findings are striking.
Sixty-five per cent of viewers discovered micro dramas within the last year. Of those, 89 per cent stumbled upon the format through social media feeds, primarily Instagram and Facebook, without ever searching for it. The algorithm did the heavy lifting. Discovery, as the report puts it bluntly, is algorithm-led, not intent-led.
The typical viewer journey begins with accidental exposure while scrolling, moves through a cliffhanger-driven incompletion hook that makes stopping feel unfinished, and is reinforced by algorithmic repetition until habitual consumption sets in. Only then, when a platform asks for an app download or a payment, does the viewer pause. Trust, not content quality, determines what happens next, and many simply return to the free feed rather than pay. It is a funnel with a wide mouth and a narrow neck.
The numbers on consumption tell their own story. Viewers spend a median of 3.5 hours per week watching micro dramas, spread across seven to eight sessions of roughly 30 minutes each, peaking sharply between 8pm and midnight. Daytime viewing is snackable and low-commitment, squeezed into morning commutes, work breaks and coffee pauses. Night-time is where the format truly lives: private, uninterrupted and, for many viewers, socially invisible. Ninety per cent watch alone, compared to just 43 per cent for long-form OTT content. Half the audience watches during their commute, well above the 37 per cent figure for streaming platforms, a direct reflection of the format’s low time investment advantage.
The audience itself breaks into three segments. Incidental viewers, comprising 39 per cent of the total, are passive consumers who stumble in and rarely seek content actively. Intent-building viewers, the largest group at 43 per cent, are beginning to form habits and seek out episodes but remain cautious. High-intent viewers, just 18 per cent, are the ones who download apps, tolerate ads and occasionally pay: skewing male, younger and urban.
What audiences want from the content is revealing. The top three genres are romance at 72 per cent, family drama at 64 per cent and comedy at 63 per cent, precisely the same top three as Hindi general entertainment television. The format rewards emotional familiarity over complexity. Romance in particular thrives because it demands low cognitive investment, needs no elaborate world-building and plays naturally into the private, pre-sleep viewing window where inhibitions lower and emotional intimacy feels safe.
The most-recalled shows, led by Kuku TV titles such as The Lady Boss Returns, The Billionaire Husband and Kiss My Luck, share a common narrative DNA: rich-poor conflict, hidden identities, power imbalances, melodrama and cliffhangers that make stopping feel physically uncomfortable. Predictability, the research warns, is fatal. Each episode must re-earn attention from scratch.
The terminology question is telling. Despite the industry’s embrace of the phrase “micro drama,” viewers have not adopted it. They call the content “short story videos,” “short dramas,” “reels with stories” or simply “serials.” One respondent from Chennai said bluntly that “micro sounds like a scientific word.” The category is at the stage that OTT occupied in 2019 and podcasts in the same year: widely consumed, poorly named and not yet crystallised in the public imagination.
Platform awareness remains alarmingly thin. Only three platforms, Kuku TV at 78 per cent, Story TV at 46 per cent and Quick TV at 28 per cent, have crossed the 20 per cent awareness threshold. The rest languish in single digits. This creates a trust deficit that directly throttles monetisation: viewers who cannot remember which app they used are hardly primed to enter their payment details.
Yet the appetite is clearly there. Sixty-five per cent of viewers watch only Indian content, drawn by the TV-serial familiarity of the storytelling, the comfort of Hindi as a shared language and the sight of actors they half-recognise from decades of television. South languages are rising fast: Tamil, Telugu and Kannada together account for 24 per cent of first-choice viewing. And AI-generated content, still a novelty, has landed better than expected: 47 per cent of viewers call it creative and unique, with only 6 per cent actively rejecting it.
Shweta Bajpai, director, media and entertainment (India) at Meta, called micro drama “a category that is rewriting the rules of Indian entertainment,” adding that the discovery engine being social distinguishes this wave from previous content formats. Shailesh Kapoor, founder and chief executive of Ormax Media, was characteristically measured: the format, he said, is showing “the early signs of becoming a distinct content category” and, given how closely it aligns with natural mobile behaviour, “has the potential to scale very quickly.”
The format’s fundamental mechanics are working. It enters lives quietly, through boredom and a scrolling thumb, and burrows in through incompletion and habit. The challenge now is monetisation: converting a category of highly engaged but deeply anonymous viewers into paying customers who trust the platform enough to hand over their UPI credentials. The story, as any micro-drama writer knows, is only as good as the next cliffhanger. India’s platforms had better have one ready.
