Brands
Gaana Rolls Out Dynamic Creatives For Audio Ads to Empower Indian Marketers
MUMBAI: India’s No. 1 music streaming app, Gaana has unveiled new audio ad capabilities that will empower advertisers to talk personally with its listeners by creating contextual audio creatives in real-time. This will enable marketers to create hyper-personalized ads in real time by tagging parts of commercial scripts based on Age, gender, location, weather, time, music preference, device, and other 3rd party data to create and serve relevant ads to more than 150 million Gaana users.
Gaana’s innovation offers a unique layer of ad personalization to audio that was till now only available with display ads. The brand’s ad engine will leverage a mix of the extensive & highly evolved user-buckets created over the past 10 years and real-time data, such as age, gender, location, weather and artist preferences among others to create contextual ads. These finer aspects will help create some of the most dynamic advertising personas in the industry, and the ensuing collaborative process with the client can create thousands — even millions of permutations for each ad creative.
Speaking at the launch, Prashan Agarwal, CEO – Gaana said, “Audio streaming is rapidly evolving as an indispensable part of the media mix of most consumer brands across lifestyle, tech and online services among others. As the industry leader, we pride ourselves on having the most comprehensive suite of ad formats that enable our clients to reach their intended audience in a native and experiential setting. To further this agenda, we have launched Dynamic ads with the ability to customize audio creatives based on a target user’s demographics and other crucial psychographic metadata to drive significantly higher brand recall that will offer the crucial edge marketers need in this noisy world.”
The Indian music streaming industry is at the cusp of an incredible growth curve as more of us start consuming music online. The sector has seen a meteoric 3X growth in the past two years, and the market is expected to 400 Mn monthly active users in the next 2 years. As the country’s go-to music app with over 150 million users streaming over 3.5 billion songs every month, the ability to target this massive user-base with dynamic programmatic audio capabilities will be a game-changer for the Indian marketing community.
Brands
Jubilant FoodWorks faces Rs 47.5 crore GST demand, plans appeal
Tax authorities flag alleged misclassification of restaurant services
MUMBAI:Â Jubilant FoodWorks Limited has landed in a tax tussle after receiving a GST demand of Rs 47.5 crore from the office of the additional commissioner of CGST and central excise in Thane, Maharashtra.
The order, issued under the provisions of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, relates to an alleged incorrect classification of certain services under the category of restaurant services. According to the tax authorities, this classification resulted in a short payment of goods and services tax for the period between the financial years 2019-20 and 2021-22.
The demand includes Rs 47.5 crore in GST along with an equal amount as penalty, in addition to applicable interest. The order was received by the company on March 13, 2026.
In a regulatory filing to the BSE Limited and the National Stock Exchange of India Limited, the company said it disagrees with the order and believes its arguments were not adequately considered.
The company is preparing to challenge the decision and plans to file an appeal. It added that once the redressal process is complete, the demand is likely to be dropped.
Despite the sizeable figure attached to the notice, the company said it does not expect any material impact on its financials, operations or other activities.
The disclosure was signed by Suman Hegde, EVP and chief financial officer, who confirmed that the company received the order at 19:06 IST on March 13 and has already initiated steps to contest it.
The development places the quick service restaurant major in the middle of a tax debate that could hinge on how certain restaurant-linked services are classified under GST rules. For now, the company appears ready to take the matter from the tax office to the appeals desk.
