MAM
ZEEL launches #BreakTheCoronaOutbreak campaign
MUMBAI: As the government of India takes continued efforts to encourage good hygiene behavior to safeguard people against the Covid-19 pandemic, it is critical that people act proactively and take precautionary measures to protect themselves and their loved ones. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL) has taken a first-of-its-kind initiative – #BreakTheCoronaOutbreak, for the well-being of its audiences.
Maintaining basic hygiene by washing your hands regularly has been identified as one of the key steps to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus, as per the World Health Organisation guidelines. As per the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, on an average, humans could touch their face over 23 times in every waking hour and there could be many such other spontaneous contact points. Repeated handwashing is a precautionary measure to prevent the spread of virus. However, awareness alone cannot drive the kind of behaviour change that is required at scale. Taking the initiative to create a unique reminder for its viewers, ZEE has decided to pause the content across its channels with a 30 second break throughout the day.
Conceptualised by Lowe Lintas, 'pause' will encourage viewers in a creative manner, to use the break to wash their hands. ZEEL chief consumer officer Prathyusha Agarwal said, “As a responsible national television network which entertains 588 million individuals every week, it is our duty to educate and encourage every citizen to adopt and practice healthy habits to fight this pandemic. While several brands are driving awareness around good hygiene, we believe this initiative to pause content and remind our audience to wash their hands will actually drive behavior. Pausing our content when the audience is most engaged will act as an in-home trigger to wash hands and contribute towards combating the spread of the outbreak.”
Lowe Lintas COO Sagar Kapoor said, “Having worked on health and hygiene brands for years, my learning is no matter how much we remind people for washing hands, there will always be laggards. Its importance is at a peak in today’s situation. Hence, a straightforward reminder to wash hands with soap.”
#BreakTheCoronaOutbreak initiative has been rolled out across 40+ channels of the ZEE network, collectively reaching approximately 588 million individuals across the country every week. As a responsible organisation, ZEE aims to support the authorities in their awareness drive against the COVID-19, through a sharp behavioural reminder using its strength as a television network to reach out to the length and breadth of the country.
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.
