MAM
Mudra wins Policybazaar.com account
MUMBAI: Mudra North & East has won the creative duties for Policybazaar.com, an online insurance aggregator with approximately 5 million visitors every month.
The size of the business is estimated to be Rs 220 million. The pitch process included eight agencies, an official statement added.
The company‘s aim is to make buying insurance easy. One can choose from the largest selection of insurance plans from leading insurance companies and select the most suited plan and purchase it online.
Policybazaar offers a wide variety of insurance plans comprising both life and general insurance. Apart from this, Policybazaar.com also allows their customers to compare financial services including personal loans and home loans, and offer end-to-end support for these services right from application to disbursal of loans.
Policybazaar.com CMO Akshya Mehrotra said, “We are very happy to appoint Mudra as our creative agency, and we look forward for some exceptional creative work from them which will help PolicyBazaar.com become a household brand. PolicyBazaar.com today is the highest visited insurance website in the insurance industry in the country. As we look forward to build our brand and help popularize the core concept of comparing insurance online and saving, we wanted a team who could feel the same essence and excitement which we see in Mudra.”
MAM
Paramount set to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in $81 billion deal
Shareholders back merger, combined entity could reshape streaming and studios.
MUMBAI: Lights, camera… consolidation, Hollywood’s latest blockbuster might be happening off-screen. Shareholders of Warner Bros. Discovery have voted in favour of selling the company to Paramount in a deal valued at $81 billion rising to nearly $111 billion including debt setting the stage for one of the biggest shake-ups in modern media. The proposed merger, still subject to regulatory approvals, would bring together a vast portfolio spanning HBO Max, CNN, and franchises such as Harry Potter under the same umbrella as Paramount’s own heavyweights, including Top Gun and CBS.
At the heart of the deal is streaming scale. Executives have indicated plans to combine HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single platform, potentially creating a stronger challenger to giants like Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video. Current market data suggests HBO Max holds around 12 per cent of US on-demand subscriptions, compared to Paramount+’s 3 per cent, together still trailing Netflix’s 19 per cent and Disney’s combined 27 per cent via Disney+ and Hulu.
Paramount CEO David Ellison has signalled that while platforms may merge, HBO’s creative identity will remain intact, stating the brand should “stay HBO” even within a broader ecosystem.
Beyond streaming, the deal would redraw the map for film production. Combining two of Hollywood’s oldest studios Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros., the new entity aims to scale output to over 30 films annually, while maintaining a 45-day theatrical window. Warner Bros. currently commands around 21 per cent of the US box office, compared to Paramount’s 6 per cent, underscoring the strategic weight of the acquisition.
But scale comes with scrutiny. Critics warn that fewer players could mean reduced consumer choice, rising subscription costs, and potential job cuts as the combined company looks to streamline overlapping operations while managing billions in debt.
The news business, too, faces a reset. CNN would join forces at least structurally with Paramount-owned CBS, raising questions about editorial independence and positioning. The merger has already drawn political attention in the United States, particularly given perceived ties between the Ellison family and Donald Trump, though the company maintains that newsroom autonomy will be preserved.
If approved, the deal would mark another milestone in Hollywood’s consolidation wave shrinking the industry’s traditional “big six” studios to a “big four”, with Paramount joining Disney, Universal, and Sony at the top table.
In an industry built on storytelling, this merger may well become its most consequential plot twist yet.








