Brands
Digital is the backbone of Tata Motors’ IPL 2019 marketing mix
MUMBAI: It is the second year of association between Tata Motors and the Indian Premier League (IPL), and the former is pretty positive that the season is going to help it in boosting the recognisability of its new launch, ‘Harrier’. This premium flagship SUV from the Tata Motors’ portfolio was announced as the official partner of the game recently.
Talking to Indiantelevision.com at the event, Tata Motors head – marketing, passenger vehicles business unit Vivek Srivatsa shared that it is extremely difficult to get a wider penetration into a diverse country like India, especially in the smaller towns but platforms like cricket play a great role in taking the brands to each household. He said, “What we found very endearing and attractive about IPL is how it has a national fervour as well as a regional flavour. Thanks to the broadcaster Star’s initiative, it has got transmission in all the four Southern languages, Marathi, and Bengali as well. I think it has allowed us to go very deep into and achieve a great level of relevant reach. It also creates good awareness and this it has helped the brand really well.”
He added, “We have already got good momentum and with IPL we would like to take it even further. With Harrier, fortunately, the customer response has been extremely strong since its launch in December. With IPL, we want to only improve it.”
Definitely, IPL has a strong viewership and it draws a lot of interest from each section of the society. Thereby, Tata Motors has a strong planning perspective as to how to leverage this platform in the best manner possible. For Srivatsa, digital is at the core of each marketing strategy, “For Harrier, we already have an extremely strong Instagram handle. It already has 25,000 organic followers. Thus, you will see a lot of Instagram activity happening this season.”
He shared, “Digital will provide the backbone for every activity that we do. There is ‘Super Striker’ and then there is ‘Fan Catch’, the two strong properties already established by us in the last season, which we will continue to grow this time as well. With Super Striker, every match has a player who is awarded a very unique award scale model of the car. I see that the players get excited and they go on their own social media handles to celebrate. It has become good content for us. Also, there are almost 400-500 sixes that are hit during the IPL. Now, every time a sixer is hit, people start looking out for who will catch the ball and win the ‘Fan Catch’. For us, this means a brand recall of 600 times during a season.”
Apart from this, Tata Motors is also planning to give the cricket fans an online virtual reality cricket game experience. “This will probably be in our showrooms and a few malls. I have already tested the game and it is fantastic. It feels like playing a real match,” said Srivatsa.
He added that there will also be an online ‘choose your dream team’ kind of championship from last year. Since the IPL trophy tour will be covering two cities-Bengaluru and Delhi, it will also be promoted heavily on digital platforms.
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.
