iWorld
Facebook appoints Umang Bedi as managing director India
MUMBAI: Facebook has appointed Umang Bedi as Managing Director, India, where he will lead in building and maintaining strategic relationships with top clients and regional agencies in the country. He will take over from Kirthiga Reddy, who will be returning to United States to take on a new role at the company’s headquarters at Menlo Park.
“I am thrilled to join Facebook and am looking forward to working with the talented teams in India, to help brands and agencies grow their business on our platform. For me it’s a promising opportunity to participate in India’s digital growth, and I can’t think of a better place to be at.” said Bedi on her new appointment.
Umang comes to Facebook with close to two decades of leadership experience covering sales, marketing and partnerships where he successfully built teams and grew businesses for multinational companies. Prior to joining Facebook, Umang was the Managing Director of the South Asia region at Adobe. He was responsible for growing their business in India and helping India grow to amongst the leading markets for Adobe in the APAC and global regions.
Umang is an engineering graduate from University of Pune, an alumni of Harvard Business School and the recipient of the prestigious ‘40 Under Forty: India’s Hottest Business Leaders Award 2014’ given by The Economic Times and Spencer Stuart in 2014.
On the other hand, Kirthiga Reddy, who was the face of Facebook in India, is set to join the Global Accounts team at Menlo Park, CA where she will manage a set of global brands and also lead the emerging markets efforts globally for the Global Accounts team, which manages Facebook’s relationships with the world’s largest global advertisers.
“After six years in India building our operations and business, it’s hard to leave a team I now call family. The good news is that we will continue to work together. As I look ahead, I am excited about how well positioned our business is, to grow from strength to strength with Umang’s leadership, and with my next opportunity to shape and drive our emerging markets strategy across some of the world’s biggest brands,” Reddy shared.
Umang will officially start at Facebook in July 2016. Kirthiga will start her new role in August 2016.
“India is known for its great talent pool and we are really pleased to have Umang Bedi, a proven business executive to lead our business in India. I also want to wish Kirthiga the very best in her new global role. Kirthiga has played a huge and key role in building our India business from scratch, and I know she will continue to deliver the same impact in the US,” said Facebook Asia Pacific VP Dan Neary.
He further added, “Facebook is where people and businesses connect on mobile and with close to 150 million monthly active people in India, we see significant opportunities to help Indian business – large and small – deliver against their business objectives in the mobile world.”
Facebook works with more than 85% of the top 100 advertisers in India identified by Kantar. 100% of those advertisers use video within their Facebook campaigns in India.
iWorld
Shemaroo buys OHO Gujarati’s entire content library for ShemarooMe
The deal lands over 30 original web series and 450-plus actors on ShemarooMe, with Pratik Gandhi’s Vitthal Teedi leading the charge
MUMBAI: Shemaroo Entertainment has moved fast and moved big. The company has snapped up the entire content library of OHO Gujarati for its streaming platform ShemarooMe, a consolidation that has no precedent in the Gujarati OTT market.
The haul is considerable. More than 30 original Gujarati web series, featuring the work of upwards of 450 local actors, will now sit under ShemarooMe’s roof. For a platform that has spent years quietly building its Gujarati credentials, including originals, curated libraries, and culturally rooted narratives, this is the kind of bulk acquisition that changes the competitive arithmetic overnight.
Saurabh Srivastava, chief operating officer for digital business at Shemaroo Entertainment, made clear the company’s ambitions stretch well beyond the subcontinent. “As we bring the well-established catalogue of OHO Gujarati onto ShemarooMe, our focus remains on making high-quality Gujarati stories more accessible while continuing to invest in compelling content,” he said. “With our strong connection to Gujarati viewers across the world, we believe these stories from the OHO catalogue can travel far and create an exciting entertainment offering for viewers.”
The first title out of the traps will be Vitthal Teedi, which hits ShemarooMe on April 10th. The series stars Pratik Gandhi, a name that needs no introduction to Gujarati audiences, and has the distinction of being the only Gujarati web series he has appeared in to date. Set in the heartland of Saurashtra during the 1980s, it traces a small-time gambler torn between personal ideals and the brutal logic of his circumstances. Character-driven, culturally embedded, and backed by a soundtrack featuring folk artists Aditya Gadhvi, Jigardan Gadhavi, and Geeta Rabari, the show arrives with considerable pedigree.
For Shemaroo, the deal fits neatly into a digital growth playbook built on sustainable expansion and deeper regional engagement. The Gujarati diaspora is large, dispersed, and underserved by mainstream streaming giants. If the company can deliver the goods, the OHO library may prove to be the most valuable land-grab in regional OTT this year.
