MAM
Prasar Bharati makes just Rs 581 mn from CWG
MUMBAI: Prasar Bharati made Rs 581 million from the Commonwealth Games while it had set itself a target of Rs 1 billion.
The minister of state for information and broadcasting S Jagathrakshakan informed the Lok Sabha on this yesterday.
Doordarshan was not allowed to air advertisements during the closing ceremony of the CWG Games following complaints that there were too many ads during the opening ceremony.
Union Sports Minister MS Gill admitted in the Lok Sabha yesterday that The Commonwealth Games Organising Committee (OC) fell more than 80 per cent short of its revenue target.
While the OC was expected to generate Rs 17.08 billion, it only managed Rs 3.27 billion. On the other hand, the OC got more money from the government than originally expected, with its expenditure overshooting its budget by Rs 6.38 billion.
The revenue came in from three sources. The sale of tickets generated Rs 391.7 million. While the contracted value of sponsorship was Rs 3.75 billion, less than a third of that sum was realised, with just Rs 1.14 billion coming in so far.
Similarly, only Rs 1.74 billion has been received for the sale of the international television rights, against the contracted value of Rs 2.13 billion. That does not include the Rs.230 million withheld as tax deducted at source from the payments of Network Ten in Australia.
The number of visitors to the Games also fell short of the goal. While the OC had estimated 100,000 visitors and 8,000 participants, the actual numbers were lower.
The number of foreign tourist arrivals in Delhi in the first two weeks of October — not all of whom were necessarily in the city for Games-related tourism — was 75,606. The total number of participants was 6,572.
Brands
Naveen Kokkanti promoted to director – devOps at Nasdaq
Tech leader steps up to steer innovation and modernise systems
BENGALURU: Naveen Kokkanti has been elevated to director – devOps at Nasdaq, marking a defining moment in his 14 year journey through the fast evolving world of digital transformation.
Based in Bengaluru, Kokkanti moves into the role after a short but impactful stint as lead devOps engineer at the global exchange operator. In his new position, he will focus on driving innovation, sharpening operational efficiency and reinforcing the organisation’s technology backbone.
For Kokkanti, the promotion reflects more than a change in title. It crowns over a decade of building, migrating and modernising enterprise systems across some of the biggest names in technology and consulting.
Before joining Nasdaq in 2025, he spent four years at Deloitte Consulting as senior consultant, where he worked extensively on large scale cloud and data transformations. His work ranged from migrating legacy data applications to AWS and implementing unity catalog governance frameworks, to designing multi cloud Databricks lakehouse strategies. He was also part of Deloitte’s Databricks alliance core team, contributing to go to market initiatives and publishing technical whitepapers on migration and architecture best practices.
Earlier roles at Virtusa and Infosys saw him lead cloud migrations, design secure infrastructure environments and manage enterprise grade AWS ecosystems. At Infosys, he led a team of engineers while overseeing everything from VPC architecture and IAM policies to disaster recovery, security hardening and cost optimisation.
His career began with hands on infrastructure and support roles at Micro Focus, Cerner Corporation and Dell Technologies, where he developed a strong foundation in systems engineering, virtualisation and enterprise IT operations.
Across roles, a consistent theme emerges. Kokkanti thrives at the intersection of cloud, data and governance. From Terraform and AWS to Databricks and enterprise devOps frameworks, his skillset reflects the growing demand for leaders who can translate complex infrastructure into scalable, secure and business ready platforms.
At Nasdaq, that blend of technical depth and leadership experience is set to play a key role as the organisation continues to evolve its global technology infrastructure. For Kokkanti, the promotion is not just about moving up. It is about building forward.
