MAM
Travel agency Make MyTrip appoints marketing head
MUMBAI: MakeMyTrip.com which claims to be India’s largest online travel company has appointed Gayatri Buddha as AVP, Marketing
It has also appointed Venkatesh Bhardwaj to head technology initiatives for the firm. Buddha started her career as a journalist and later moved on to be part of the core launch team of Monsterindia.com. As marketing communications specialist, she rose to the position of senior brand manager and had been successful in positioning monsterindia.com as the leading jobsite in India. Buddha brings with her, in-depth knowledge of the online market and exhaustive consumer insights.
Venkatesh will be heading the technology team – the backbone of MakeMyTrip. A veteran in the industry, Venkatesh – prior to his appointment at MakeMyTrip – was responsible for driving important technological innovations and server management at Mantraonline.com, one of India’s largest horizontal portals and part of the Bharti Telecom conglomerate.
MakeMyTrip.com CEO Deep Kalra said, “In the B2C segment, jobs and travel are the two high growth categories and having worked in one of them for over five years, Gayatri provides the perfect fit to help drive the unique blend of US-India business and the soon to be launched domestic business of Makemytrip.com.
“For any online company, the technology team is the lifeline. It was imperative for us to bring on board someone who not only has sound knowledge about the industry but also a team leader. And we are lucky to have got someone of Venkatesh’s eminence”.
MAM
Sameer Nair shares heartfelt note as he exits Applause Entertainment
After nine years building the streamer’s content engine, one of India’s best-known TV men is moving on
MUMBAI: Sameer Nair is out. The chief executive of Applause Entertainment, the content studio backed by Kumar Mangalam Birla’s media empire, has announced his departure after nearly nine years at the helm, closing the chapter on one of Indian entertainment’s more quietly consequential careers.
Nair, who built Applause from the ground up in its current avatar, oversaw a slate that spanned Indian originals and international adaptations, threading together a hub-and-spoke business model that partnered with streaming platforms, broadcasters and production houses alike. The results were uneven, as they always are in content, but the ambition was not.
In a post on LinkedIn, Nair was generous to his outgoing patron. He thanked Birla for being an “inspirational boss and a great patron of the arts,” and signed off with a cheerful “Au Revoir” and a promise to remain Applause’s biggest cheerleader. Whether that sentiment survives the next chapter remains to be seen.
No successor has been named. Applause Entertainment did not immediately comment.
Nair built the machine. Now someone else has to run it — and in a streaming market that is simultaneously consolidating and convulsing, that is no small ask.
