Brands
Play Games24x7 won’t compromise customer experience for ads
MUMBAI: Ahead of the cricket world cup and IPL season, Play Games24x7 has unveiled its new fantasy sports platform, My11Circle, offering a completely new way of experiencing fantasy cricket.
The platform offers a simple and fun way to experience fantasy sports. Fans can pick and select players from both sides in a match and create a fantasy team of their own. Basis the performance of their selected 11 cricketers, a team owner can win exciting cash prizes. This doubles the fans' engagement and excitement for any cricket match now that every fan can create one’s own fantasy team.
Talking about the marketing strategy behind the game, Play Games24X7 co-founder and CEO Bhavin Pandya shared with Indiantelevisio.com that with cricket season around the corner, it is planning to promote the game heavily. He revealed that the game will be available in an app that will also allow the users to access its previous game, The Rummy Circle. “RummyCircle has a massive user base with more than 200k monthly active players, for these players My11Circle will already be a part of their existing app, so our fantasy game gets a massive headstart because of Rummy,” he said.
He further added, “For new users, we plan to leverage all digital platforms and also ATL mediums like TV, radio, and print.”
However, he is not looking towards brand associations to monetise the platform. He said, “We generate huge traffic on our apps and can monetise that by driving ads revenue by showing ads from other brands, but we believe that it would act as a distraction to the players. Our company believes in providing awesome game playing experience to its customers and we would never do anything which may hamper that.”
Talking about the USP of the game, Bhavin Pandya noted, “Our app boasts the fastest score updates. If you look at the competition, the match score updates on other platforms lag by a few minutes, for which a user needs to switch between multiple apps to view scores and to view the fantasy game standings. We have tried to make our score updates almost real-time, which will ensure the user gets everything on one app.”
Brands
Zscaler, Airtel launch India AI Cyber Research Centre
New hub to boost cyber resilience and trusted AI use
NEW DELHI: As India’s digital engine roars ahead, so do the risks riding shotgun. In response, Zscaler, Inc. and Bharti Airtel have joined hands to launch the AI and Cyber Threat Research Center – India, a national initiative aimed at strengthening the country’s cyber defences and accelerating responsible AI adoption.
The centre is designed as a multi stakeholder platform that brings together industry, government and academia. Its mission is clear: protect critical sectors such as telecom, banking and energy, shield everyday digital users, and future proof India’s fast expanding online ecosystem.
India has long been a major innovation hub for Zscaler, with a substantial portion of its cyber research talent based here. With this new centre, that footprint evolves into a national collaboration engine. The idea is simple but ambitious, build in India, for India, and help power the country’s journey towards a secure and digitally self reliant future.
The timing is telling. India is building digital systems at population scale, not just enterprise scale. That scale has widened the attack surface dramatically. At the same time, cyber criminals and nation state actors are deploying AI to scan, probe and exploit vulnerabilities in minutes.
Zscaler’s research arm, ThreatLabz India, reports millions of infiltration attempts every month. These include espionage campaigns linked to regional geopolitical tensions, 1.2 million intrusion attempts from 20,000 sources targeting 58 Indian digital entities, and a rise in zero day exploit attempts across multiple industries.
In such an environment, perimeter based security models are struggling to keep pace. The new centre aims to push a shift towards secure by design systems and Zero Trust architecture.
Its strategy rests on four pillars: protect through real time intelligence, remediate by working directly with government agencies, facilitate adoption of AI driven security and Zero Trust frameworks, and build a stronger cybersecurity talent pipeline through specialised certifications.
As founding members, Zscaler and Airtel will combine global threat intelligence with local network visibility. Zscaler will deploy a dedicated India focused research team and draw insights from its Zero Trust Exchange platform, which processes over 500 billion daily transactions worldwide. Airtel, meanwhile, will contribute deep visibility into IoT and mobile traffic, helping detect suspicious activity faster and coordinate response across the ecosystem.
Bharti Airtel executive vice chairman Gopal Vittal, said the partnership extends Airtel’s commitment to safeguarding customers and the nation’s digital fabric. He added that the collaboration would address challenges unique to the Indian market and encourage secure and confident digital engagement.
Zscaler chief executive, chairman and founder Jay Chaudhry, said India’s digital ambition cannot be secured with legacy firewalls and VPNs. He noted that a modern Zero Trust architecture is essential for a hyper connected world and that the new centre would harness the scale of Zscaler’s global security cloud while empowering a new generation of Indian cyber defenders.
Additional members from critical public and private sectors are expected to join the initiative in the coming months, expanding its scope and deepening collaboration.
In a world where threats travel at machine speed, India’s answer is to think faster, collaborate wider and build smarter.
