Hindi
BMD Group invests Rs 80 million in media and entertainment
MUMBAI: The Chennai based BMD group made a foray into media and entertainment with Air Media.
The diverse & comprehensive offerings to be provided by AIR MEDIA across animation, cinema trading and both feature film and television concept production, will make it among the first few fully integrated media and entertainment companies in South India. At a press conference held in the city, the company formally launched its operations in the presence of Karti P Chidambaram, member of All India Congress Committee (AICC).
AIR MEDIA also unveiled its exclusive IP and India’s first non-mythological animation character that will appeal to a global audience, called �Tusker’, at the conference. The integrated media venture will focus on live 2D & 3D animation, feature film production, multi-lingual cinema trading, production of innovative TV concepts & serials and distribution of national and overseas titles among other offerings.
AIR MEDIA has already acquired the dubbing rights of more than 400 titles that will be sold in India over the next 3-4 years. Apart from this, the first Tamil movie produced by AIR MEDIA is slated for release in January 2008 and final negotiations are under way to sign another South Indian feature film.
�As a group when we looked at opportunities to diversify and grow, we saw huge potential in the media and entertainment segment and this has been validated by the immense growth in the last 2 years and the entry of large companies into the segment. India has a natural advantage, being the world’s largest producer and consumer of films and Chennai is emerging to be a hub for entertainment technology & innovation. In this context, we expect AIR MEDIA to become a key business and revenue contributor to the group. We have invested over 80 million initially, sourced from internal accruals and are targeting an estimated revenue of Rs 1 billion by 2010. We are also building a highly professional core team with complementing skill sets�, said AIR Media CEO and BMD Group chairman S Baskar.
Noted Tamil cinema director and Creative head of AIR MEDIA, Thakali Srinivasan added, �AIR MEDIA is committed to developing its own intellectual properties for the international market. We will focus on a niche & are not looking at mature or cluttered spaces. We are working closely on innovative concepts in co-production and independent production of Feature Films, Short Films & TV Serials and trading of multi-lingual content. AIR MEDIA has a well equipped animation studio that will provide international quality digital media content to its customers.�
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
