MAM
Sachin Tendulkar announces ‘Cricket Carnival’ at Smaaash, India
BENGALURU: Smaaash Entertainment Pvt. Ltd., launched the Smaaash Sachin Virat Cricket Carnival in association with its brand ambassador Sachin Tendulkar at its new outlet at the DLF Mall of India, Noida. Smaaash is a world-class sports-centric immersive and interactiv entertainment center that offers unmatched range of games – covering sports like cricket, football, ten-pinbowling besides a superlative virtual-reality experience. The launch of Smaaash Noida also commemorates the launch of Mighty Small Café & Bar in NCR. Mighty Small at Smaaash is the new concept café being launched at all Smaaash properties across the country.
The ‘Smaaash Sachin Virat Cricket Carnival’is presented by legendary cricket icons Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli, who are associated with Smaaash – India’s leading sports and entertainment zone. The carnival with nationwide presence is designed to be a fun-filled cricket tournament that will bring together 2000 teams across the nation to compete against each other. The tournament will be played across five Smaaash centers and the finals will be held in Mumbai. The highlight of this tournament will be the grand finale where the prizes will be awarded by both the cricket luminaries, Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli, at a glittering event in Mumbai.
Brain child of the multi-faceted entrepreneur Shripal Morakhia, Smaaash combines the best of sports, music and dining into a highly immersive, interactive, innovative and involved entertainment experience. At the launch of the ‘Smaaash Sachin Virat Cricket Carnival’, the founder said, “Smaaash is the only brand that has the support of two cricketing legends – Sachin and Virat. The glorious presence of these stalwarts will surely make the this carnival an event to remember for cricket enthusiasts all over the country.”
Sachin Tendulkar, the brand ambassador of Smaaash addressed his fans at the launch event and said: “The exciting and unique concept of Smaaash provides the avenue to enjoy the pleasures of life. With the kind of stressful lives we lead, it’s imperative to play sports and relax our minds. This Cricket Carnival is designed to bring the excitement of real sports into your lives with incredible precision, modern equipment and real life experience. I look forward to this tournament connecting cricket lovers from across the country.”
On the other hand, Virat Kohli, Smaaash Youth Icon, added: “All that cricket lovers want is entertainment. Not a war or a fight. This Cricket Carnival is a larger-than-life sports festival that will be a perfect platform for all cricket enthusiasts to showcase their skills. The aim of this fun fiesta is to engage youth in thrilling activities and social interaction with their peers. Of course, the pulsating energy of a real-like cricket pitch will make this tournament a memorable experience for all. I am so excited to be a part of this one-of-its-kind cricket fest.”
The legendary sportstar Sachin Tendulkar has been an integral part of the Smaaash family since its inception in 2012. In his own words, “The advanced simulators at Smaaash are fascinating and are very close to the real match experience.” On the other hand, one of the world’s leading batsmen, Virat Kohli was signed as the Smaaash Youth Icon in early 2015. Thus Smaaash is the only brand that has the support of two cricketing legends, and the glorious presence of these stalwarts will surely make the Smaaash Cricket Carnival an event to remember for cricket enthusiasts all over the country.
Cricket lovers can start registering their entries for the tournament that will be conducted across Smaaash centers, in Mumbai, Gurgaon, Noida, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Each six member team will play in the Smaaash cricket lanes and face a selected bowling line up. The Smaaash Sachin Virat Cricket Carnival will have five Categories- Under 16 (School), Under-25 (College), Open, Corporate and Women’s Category. The Open Category winners from each city will be eligible to come to Mumbai and will face off as Team Sachin and Team Virat.
This tournament will be played at Smaaash’s one-of-its-kind 360-degree cricket simulator at each center where cricketing legends like Shane Warne, Wasim Akram, Kieron Pollard, Sachin Tendulkar and many others bowl to you.
The precise technology of Smaaash Cricket not only replicates the bowler’s action perfectly, but also the cricket simulator is the only one of its kind which can bowl spin and swing balls with variations of line and length. The laser tracking and the high-tech cameras track every move and even offer replays and wagon wheels of the score.
Thus cricketing teams, who’re used to playing in apartment compounds and neighbourhood parks, will now get the experience of playing at the packed Lord’s stadium.
There is a nominal registration fee and the interested teams can register on the official website of Smaaash i.ewww.smaaash.in. The registration process will begin on May 20th, 2016 at all five Smaaash centres. The winners across categories can take home the Smaaash Sachin Virat Cricket Carnival Cup along with memories of being mentored by a legend. That’s not all, the national winner and runner-up in the Open category will get Rs. 5 lakhs and Rs.3 lakhs respectively.
This is a press release.
Digital
GUEST COLUMN: How AI is restructuring distributor and retailer motivation models
From incentives to intelligence, AI is redefining how brands engage channel partners
MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming how brands engage with their most critical yet often overlooked stakeholders: distributors, retailers, and last-mile influencers. For Abhinav Jain, co-founder and CEO of Almonds Ai, this shift marks a fundamental departure from traditional, transaction-led incentive models toward behaviour-driven, data-intelligent ecosystems. In this piece, Jain examines how AI is enabling brands to decode partner motivations, predict engagement patterns, and deliver personalised, scalable experiences—ultimately redefining channel relationships from transactional exchanges to long-term growth partnerships.
Across many sectors, there is increasing recognition that motivating those who bring products to market (distributors, retailers, last-mile influencers) poses a growing challenge.
Brands continue to invest significant marketing and digital resources to consumers, yet in many countries and the vast majority of emerging economies, these types of consumer-focused investment areas have had little impact on ultimate product delivery. Rather, it is still the case that traditional retail continues to make up most products sold.
So why is it that the systems built around motivating these channels have yet to evolve?
For decades, distributor and retailer engagement revolved around static schemes – quarterly targets, volume-based rewards, and occasional trade promotions. These programs were designed around transactions, not behaviour. The assumption was simple: if incentives increase, performance will follow.
Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, the definition of performance is being challenged.
With the development of artificial intelligence, businesses can move beyond simply creating loyalty based on transactional-based models and toward models built on behaviours, the behaviours of channel partners that are intrinsic to their motivations in engaging with particular brands. As a result, the means by which businesses develop relationships within their distribution network are starting to evolve; thus, ultimately changing how brands interact with those within their distribution network.
Assessing engagement: Transitioning from transactional- to behavioural intelligence
Traditional loyalty systems refer to transactional activity (sales data). Although this data is valuable and important, it only provides a partial view of engagement across the channel partner.
For example, a retailer may have a high frequency of sales of a product, but their lack of engagement with the manufacturer would not reflect that they have true loyalty toward that brand. Conversely, a retailer who actively participates in training programmes, acts as brand advocates, and is engaged in learning with the supplier would exhibit more profound levels of loyalty but would have been invisible based on historical incentive programmes.
Artificial intelligence allows for the identification of behaviours that help to address this gap. Brands are able to use a variety of engagement data points, participate in learning programs, respond to communications, redeem behaviour and track platform use behaviour in order to identify motivation through behaviour.
McKinsey has stated that companies that leverage advanced analytics for their sales and distribution functions can achieve as much as a 15-20 per cent increase in productivity due to increased awareness of their behavioural trends throughout their networks.
This visibility of behavioural patterns within channel ecosystems can be transformational to brands as they can now view how partners engage on their path to purchasing products, instead of just measuring the sales revenue generated by those purchases.
Predicting motivations, not just measuring performance
Possibly, the largest contribution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to helping brands engage with partners via channel ecosystems is its ability to predict future engagement versus simply measuring past performance.
Traditionally, brands only realised that a partner was disengaged (not likely to purchase products) once their sales performance had already declined. By then, the brand would have to use significant amounts of incentives or aggressive promotional activities to recovery their partner’s engagement level.
AI models can help organisations to detect early signs that a partner is becoming disengaged, such as declining participation in learning modules, declining interaction via the platform, or slower reward redemption rates. These indicators can help organisations to proactively engage with their partners before their sales performance begins to decline.
The practical application of AI and predictive analytics gives brands the ability to re-engage with their partners prior to their sales performance declines. For example, instead of developing and implementing broad-reaching incentive programs that provide a “one size fits all” incentive to all partners in an ecosystem, brands are able to develop targeted, engaging re-engagement programmes. This is how personalisation can be done on a large scale, such as across global distribution and retail networks.
The vast majority of distributor and retailer channels have thousands, if not millions, of individual channel partners. Historically, providing personalisation to such a large number of businesses has not been feasible.
However, with the advent of AI, personalisation at scale is becoming a reality.
Brands can now create tailored engagement journeys for all their partners, based on their partner profiles, through some combination of machine learning models and behavioural segmentation. For example, high-performing distributors might receive higher levels of leadership-based recognition and greater incentives to continue to grow. Emerging retailers, on the other hand, might be supported with training, onboarding rewards, and measurable performance milestones.
The shift towards personalisation of partner engagement echoes the direction that consumer marketing is already moving towards.
According to Salesforce’s report, over 70 per cent of customers expect personalisation in the way that brands engage with them. As such, there is a growing expectation for B2B ecosystems to have these same types of expectations from their channel partners.
Gamification and continuous engagement
AI is also radically changing how brands will engage with their channel partners through the use of gamification.
Many traditional incentive-based contests and leaderboards would spark temporary engagement among their participants, but they struggled to sustain engagement over time. With the use of AI, gamification mechanics are evolving dynamically based on historical and evolving participation patterns by their channel partners.
Challenges, rewards, and recognition structures can be modified continuously in order to sustain engagement with all of a brand’s partner segments. This will provide a greater opportunity to move away from episodic campaigns towards ongoing, continuous engagement experiences.
When channel partners receive motivation as part of their daily business activities through recognition, learning, and tracking their performance, long-term loyalty will be achieved.
Aligning motivation to broader impact
There is a growing trend within the channel ecosystem to integrate sustainability and socially responsible behaviours into the channel partner programmes of brands.
Increasingly, brands are motivating their partners to use sustainable practices in their operations, participate in sustainable practices like sustainability-related knowledge programmes, or promote products that are in line with their sustainability objectives.
Brands can use AI to monitor and measure these types of behaviours and incorporate them into their incentive frameworks so that brands can align their commercial objectives with broader social and environmental outcomes.
A shift in the way brands view their channel partners
AI is having the most significant impact on the way that brands are now viewing their channel partners, as it relates to the underlying philosophy of those fundamental relationships.
For the past several decades, many brands have viewed their channel partners as intermediaries in the supply chain. More and more brands are now beginning to view their channel partners as key ‘partners-in-growth,’ and their actions can have a direct impact on market performance.
In fact, all the channel ecosystems are using behavioural engagement platforms to design new models that reward not just transactional behaviour, but also create continuous engagement journeys for their partners, where their partners can receive recognition for their participation, learning, and continued engagement, thereby reinforcing long-term loyalty to the brand.
The future: Intelligent channel ecosystems
As we consider what the next phase of channel engagement may look like, many believe that it will be based on intelligent ecosystems, using AI to continuously monitor and adjust the engagement strategies used to engage their channel partners, in real time and based on the behaviours of those partners.
For brands operating in complex distribution networks, the ability to perform well will be determined both by whether products are available to their customers, as well as by the enthusiasm, expertise, and loyalty shown from each channel partner that represents the brand each and every day that they are working on behalf of the brand.
While AI clearly does not eliminate the human aspect of a brand’s relationship with its channel partners, it does allow brands to better understand and nurture that relationship.
In markets where the last mile will determine whether a sale is made, how one leverages the intelligence gained by using AI will ultimately be the difference between gaining a new, sustainable competitive advantage versus losing one.
