MAM
Rabinder Thirumurthy is Wavemaker MENA CEO
MUMBAI: Wavemaker, the media, content and technology company, has named Rabinder Thirumurthy as CEO for the MENA region.
Also known as Rabe Iyer, he joins from GroupM India’s media agency Motivator where he was managing director in Delhi. He will shift to Dubai officially from 10 June.
Commenting on the development, Wavemaker global president of marketing development Ajit Varghese said, “I’ve known Rabe since he joined Motivator and I’ve always been impressed by his commitment to excellence. He’s a proven leader with strong business acumen and I’m sure that he, together with our fantastic leadership team across the region, is perfectly positioned to make Wavemaker MENA a formidable future-facing agency.”
GroupM MENA CEO Filip Jabbour said, “Rabe is a great plus for Wavemaker; he has the skill, the vision and the deep understanding of our industry to lead and grow our business in the region.”
Iyer added, “Wavemaker’s ambition, it’s obsession with the purchase journey and desire to connect and scale its capabilities, is exciting. I believe that MENA has a large potential for growth and I look forward to working with the talented team here to deliver on the agency’s ambition across the region.”
His successor at Motivator will be announced soon.
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.
