NEW DELHI: ‘Mobile Seva,’ the national mobile governance initiative launched by Department of Electronics and Information Technology has bagged the second prize under the United Nations Public Service Awards Programme, the most prestigious international recognition of excellence in public service.

The award recognizes the creative achievements and contributions of public service institutions to a more effective and responsive public administration in countries worldwide. Through an annual competition, the UNPSA promotes the role, professionalism and visibility of public service. It encourages exemplary public service and recognizes that democracy and successful governance are built on a competent civil service. 

‘Mobile Seva’ won the award under the category “Promoting Whole-of-Government Approaches in the Information Age” of the United Nations Public Service Awards, 2014. ‘Mobile Seva’ is the only winner from India across all categories this year. 

The ‘Mobile Seva’ aims at mainstreaming mobile governance in the country as a compelling new paradigm for delivery of public services electronically through the mobile platform. DeitY launched ‘Mobile Seva’ in 2011 as a new countrywide initiative on mobile governance to provide public services to the citizens through mobile phones and handheld devices.

As a part of this initiative, a centralized platform named Mobile Service Delivery Gateway (MSDG) has been created to provide a one-stop solution to all the central and state government departments and agencies across the nation for all their mobile service delivery needs. The objective of the initiative is to provide a centrally hosted infrastructure and platform that allow all government departments and agencies to expeditiously start offering their services through mobile phones without having to invest heavily in creating their separate mobile platforms. The platform enables departments to provide their electronic services through various mobile based channels such as SMS, mobile apps, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) etc. 

As on date, over 1000 government departments and agencies across the country have integrated their services with this platform and have delivered over 93 crore SMS based push transactions to citizens. 318 pull based services are also live on the platform/ The Mobile AppStore on MSDG hosts 300 live and fully integrated mobile apps for a wide range of public services. Real-time status and information is available round the clock on the Mobile Seva portal www.mgov.gov.in and through regular posts on social media (www.facebook.com/DIT.MGOV). 

MUMBAI: Star Plus is all set to team up with the biggest youth icon, Yo Yo Honey Singh for a first of its kind, unconventional singing reality show – India’s Raw Star.  The show that marks Yo Yo Honey Singh’s debut on television will bring in a new visual experience to music, something which has never been seen before in any singing reality show.

 Yo Yo Honey Singh will be playing the role of a friend-mentor-judge to all the budding Raw Stars.  He will be seen picking up participants from different parts who with their unique singing, style and performance, will fight it out to become the first ever India’s Raw Star.

 Gone are the days of standing in long queues for hours and travelling long distances for auditions.  Talent will now be picked up from across India and households abroad with the help of the digital platform, and success will just be a click away through the first ever exclusive digital auditions.

India’s Raw Star kick started the audition phase of the show by opening its digital platforms for users to upload their audition video. The users have been given an option to upload an entertaining, and performance packed video of them singing on either the India’s Raw Star mobile app, WAP site or on the website. The channel has also released a special audition tutorial video with Yo Yo Honey Singh to explain to viewers the process of uploading an audition entry.

Produced by reality show veteran Gajendra Singh’s – Sai Baba Productions,  India’s Raw Star will be on the lookout for the ultimate performing artist who can create their own inimitable style of singing, and is an all-round performer irrespective of the language of singing or the genre of music. In the show, Yo Yo Honey Singh will specifically look out for talent who are great performers and not necessarily just great playback singers.

Nikhil Madhok, Senior Vice President Marketing & Programming Strategy at Star Plus, said, “Star Plus has always been at the forefront of creating benchmarks . With India’s Raw Star we are trying to create one such benchmark with the way we are conducting auditions for the show, which will be done exclusively on the Digital platform. Not only will this make it easier to for potential participants to audition, it will also enable others to view audition videos online, share them on social and create an online fan community even before the launch of the show. The initial response has been tremendous and we hope to see this grow in the weeks to come.”

India’s youth sensation and icon, Yo Yo Honey Singh will be involved at each step in the journey of making the promising young talent into a Raw Star. “I am looking for talent that is authentic, original and raw! In India’s Raw Star the hunt is for someone who has his or her own style of singing, a non-tampered versatility in his or her style, someone who is as fresh as maa ke haat ka khaana. The singer has to be a performer and has to be someone who is better than me and that is no easy task!” said Yo Yo Honey Singh.

One can log onto www.starplus.in/indiasrawstar via web or mobile phones. Alternatively one can download the India’s Raw Star mobile app. A contestant can participate by submitting his audition video along with the requested details. Below mentioned are the Terms and Conditions for the auditions and process of how to upload one’s video.

NEW DELHI: India’s Home Digital Media has joined BesTV Indonesia to launch its OTT (Over the Top)/ IPTV services globally to target the 25 million Indian diaspora living outside India by using the CDN “Content Delivery Network” of Akamai and Octoshape.

Home Digital Media which is a subsidiary of Home Cable Network, an independent Delhi based multi system operator (MSO) and a “Class B” ISP in India headed by Vikki Choudhry, has successfully tested the system.

BesTV and Home Digital Media have been working in close association on this partnership project for the past three years and  have rolled out its global OTT services on the various application platforms  of Intan, MyTVapp, Relay TV and Home Digital Anytime/Anywhere TV.

Choudhry told indiantelevision.com that this strategic association will provide Live TV channels, Movies and Music on Demand content through various applications specially developed for Android, iOS, 3GPP and Windows with a tailored solution of push and lev transcode made for low bandwidth with adaptive bitrates supporting multi format live streaming for the Aviation and the Maritime Industry.

Targeting about 90 million passengers travelling every month, it will enable passengers on ships and even airlines to watch excellent quality Live TV Indian and International content on their handheld tablets, ipads and laptops while on the move.

Home Digital has a worldwide footprint through its Sillicon valley headquartered technology partner company Gaian Solutions with R&D development centres in India and China. Gaian is a leading edge media technology platform company that caters to all aspects of the content distribution, content streaming, DRM, and also STB solution for delivery over Cable, Satellite, OTT and IPTV platforms.

BesTV Indonesia is an affiliate to BesTV International, a subsidiary of Shanghai Media Group (SMG), China. BesTV Indonesia and BesTV International are principally engaged in the provision of technical content and marketing services for TV, computer and mobile terminals through media source platforms. The Company’s main business includes Internet protocol television (IPTV), mobile, smart television and network video, broadcasting integration movie, television and multimedia production business.

BesTV China is also the pioneer and founder of Chinese IPTV business model in 2005 and has already grown into the world’s largest IPTV operator with more than 20 million effective IPTV users in China.

BesTV International operates its business in North Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa.  BesTV has worked enthusiastically to develop comprehensive strategic partnerships with leading manufacturers through close cooperation, with the purpose of building the bridge between television and telecommunications industry, sharing industry opportunities and realizing common development.

NEW DELHI: The Indian film Qissa by Anup Singh, which has already won accolades on the international festival circuit, will one of the nine Asian films in competition at the 20th Festival International des Cinémas d’Asie.

The Cinemas d’Asie which is a specific festival for developing film industries in Asia will be held from 11 to 18 February in Vesoul in France next month.

There are two films from Japan, both receiving their European premiere, and one each from China, India, Iran, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and Turkey in the Festival. Five of these nine films were also screened at last year’s Busan International Film Festival in South Korea.

Qissa was also the opening film of the 43rd International Film Festival at Rotterdam from 22 January to 2 February and this marked the European premiere of the film. It won the Audience Award at that Festival. 

The award comprising Euro 10,000 (INR 9 Lakh Approx) is given to the most voted film supported by the Hubert Bals Fund.

Qissa which received the Hubert Bals Fund for Script & Project Development in 2004, was made with further support from the Netherlands Film Fund, and was co-produced by Dutch company Augustus Film.

Set in post-colonial India, the film stars Irrfan Khan as a Sikh who has fled his village to escape ethnic cleansing at the time of partition who tries to start a new life for his family.

The choice of opening slot for the drama is part of the 25th anniversary celebration of the festival’s Hubert Bals Fund, which had supported the Indian film’s script development ten years ago.

The festival will also host a retrospective, Mysterious Objects: 25 Years of Hubert Bals Fund, including a screening of the fund’s first recipient, Chen Kaige’s Life on a String (1991).

Qissa is represented internationally by Germany’s The Match Factory GmbH. The film had its North American and Asian premieres at the Toronto International Film Festivaland Busan International Film Festival respectively.

Earlier, the film added one more feather in its cap when actor Tillotama Shome won the Best Actress award in the New Horizons competition at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival.

In Qissa, Shome plays the youngest daughter of Umber Singh (Irrfan Khan) who decides to raise her as a boy.

Shome made her screen debut with Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding in 2001 and went on to play roles in Florian Gallenberger’s Shadows of Time and Dibakar Banerjee’s Shanghai.

Qissa earlier won the Silver Gateway Award in India Gold competition at the 15^thMumbai Film Festival  and the NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) Award for Best Asian Film at the 38th Toronto International Film Festival where it had its premiere.

Set amidst the ethnic cleansing and general chaos that accompanied India’s partition in 1947, this sweeping drama stars Irrfan Khan as a Sikh attempting to forge a new life for his family while keeping their true identities a secret from their community.

Beautiful, timeless, and touching the deepest of human impulses, Qissa carries the spirit of a great folk tale. Although it’s set in a particular time and place — the Punjab region that straddles India and Pakistan in the years immediately after partition — it is both deeper and broader than any one moment. As this eerie family drama progresses, it cuts to the heart of eternal desires for honour, empathy, and love.

“Qissa” is originally an Arabic word meaning folk tale. Both the word and the idea migrated from the Gulf into the Punjab, still connected by the ancient oral narratives handed down in communal settings. Working within this tradition, director Anup Singh gives his film both the grand themes and elemental emotions of classic storytelling. As Umber’s daughter is raised as a boy, the characters are propelled with greater and greater urgency towards their inevitable fates.

MUMBAI: India’s first online digital channel, Trendspotters.tv, has announced ‘India’s hunt for its Trendspotter’ – A Contest now live on Facebook & Twitter. Under this contest, you simply have to capture some unique trend setting phenomenon from your city and upload the image or video on the Trendspotters.tv fan page. This Pan India Contest entitles the trendspotter with maximum votes to win a grand prize of Rs. 1 Lakh. The last date to upload the happening trends is February 15, 2014.

Kunal Kishore Sinha, Founder, www.trendspotters.tv said, “‘India’s hunt for its Trendspotter’ Contest is our latest endeavour to creatively engage our viewers and further extend our Trendspotting team. There is something always trending around you and this is the perfect opportunity to update the trend lovers about it. Spotting the most exquisite trend from the world of fashion, entertainment, music and so on could entitle you to a Grand Prize.”

Participants have to simply register themselves, enter the details on the nature of one’s video/image and upload through Facebook or YouTube. Participants can upload more than one entry which will then appear in the Gallery. They can invite friends to vote for their entry and based on the votes received, their ranking will appear on the Leaderboard. They can keep a tab on the entries they have posted on My Profile.

The top ranking participant will not only win a cash Prize of Rs.1 lakh but also get a chance to become the Trendspotter for India’s first online digital channel for a year! Answering a question about an existing video of Trendspotters.tv in the Watch and Win segment can enable participants to win some exciting prizes daily!

Trendspotters.tv is giving eager enthusiasts with a streak for observing the quirky, the stylish, the extraordinary and the offbeat, the perfect platform to showcase their ability to spot a cool trend in their locality. Now everyone can become a Trendspotter!

This campaign has been activated in association with Digital Brand Partner BrandAppz.

MUMBAI: FremantleMedia produced India’s Got Talent won the Best Entertainment award at the 18th Asian TV Awards which was held at Singapore. The show is aired on Colors and is currently gearing up for its fifth series.

FremantleMedia India’s Mission Cover Shot, which airs on National Geographic and gives photographers the chance to showcase their creativity before an esteemed panel of judges, was also awarded Most Commended show in the Best Reality Show category.

FremantleMedia India managing director Anupama Mandloi said, “It’s an enormous honour to receive the two awards at the Asian Television Awards and is a real testimony to the hard work of our talented production teams and partners behind the shows.”

NEW DELHI: The new Malayalam news television channel TV Now is launching a fully-integrated high definition news production using GrassValley.

Operated by the Kerala Chamber of Commerce and Industry, it will deliver programming in high definition to forty million viewers across Kerala. “As the only business consortium to launch a news channel in India, it is important for us to have the most modern technologies in place to reach out to our millions of viewers in a timely and efficient manner”, said TV Now’s Bhagath Chandrashekhar.

TV Now’s new infrastructure will include three GV director non-linear live production systems, the GV STRATUS nonlinear media production tools, nine LDX Flex HD Studio cameras, a Trinix NXT digital video routing switcher, a K2 Summit 3G transmission servicer, EDIUS non-linear editing software, and HD K2 SAN storage. These solutions will enable TV Now to get news to air more quickly and without any interruptions, which is crucial to the smooth running of an operation that airs 24×7.

“With GrassValley’s powerful tool set at our fingertips, we will have an integrated platform that combines production tools and asset management a TV Now so that we can confidently sign-on with state-of-the-art production processes,” said KCCI chairman K N Marzook. “With TV Now, we aim to create an exceptional TV viewing experience and the only way to do that is with superior technology in place”, he added.

“The broadcast market in India is currently going through a period of exciting change and is a vital part of GrassValley’s pathway,” said GrassValley’s Asia Pacific VP Stephen Wong. He said it also marks the first time that GV Director and GV STRATUS will be deployed in India and signifies a powerful step for GrassValley’s presence in India’s growing broadcast market.

Ask any traveller the meaning of a journey and he/she is likely to say it’s something where you never know how far you’ve reached till you go back to where it started.

Indeed, this is the very core of what they call wanderlust, and who better to know it than travelxp HD, India’s first high definition travel channel.

Presently, the channel stands strong as a premium lifestyle with 400+ hours of original HD travel content – shot across 35+ countries and growing, expanding at 150 hours each year, and covering all genres of the travel space. Shot in English, with hosts from across the globe, the channel boasts a truly international look and feel. Exactly what draws it to this year’s MIPCOM.

travelxp now in its third year at MIPCOM, feels that exhibiting in a market like MIPCOM has added to its learning. The channel has not only tapped market demands and understood buyer requisites, but has also understood the latest trends, practices and technology which in turn have laid the guidelines for content that the channel creates in the future.

Says travelxp HD director Nisha Chothani: “An international platform like MIPCOM is the year‘s most anticipated global market for entertainment content across all mediums. Our content finds the perfect fit with the needs of travel content buyers across the globe. It provides us an opportunity to reach out to our buyers, leading to ground-breaking partnerships.”

So what’s the channel offering at MIPCOM 2013? It will launch five new shows including Quest, City Breaks, Bliss, Food Highway and World Spas for participants this year.

Apart from these, travelxp HD will also present shows like XP Guide, Xplore World, Xplore India, Great Indian Hotels, Great World Hotels, Foodicted, Strictly Street, Heritage, Landmark, Best from the Rest, Bada Weekend, Hills and Valleys, and Divine Destination at the content sale market. “With this, we are looking forward to cracking deals and partnerships with our buyers. Also, networking with content buyers and aggregators across the globe will be an add-on,” says Chothani.

And it’s not just travelxp HD, the entire travel industry stands to benefit from MIPCOM. “Travel content caters to a large international audience due to its geographical spread. MIPCOM provides us a platform with immense selling opportunity; it helps us to reach out to around 4,400 buyers from 100 countries across the globe. Travel content demand is growing globally, platforms like MIPCOM help two ends meet, thereby leading to the growth of the genre,” elaborates Chothani.

Meanwhile, travelxp HD shows will be accessible to viewers on various multi-media platforms from DTH systems to in-flight screens, TV networks to IPTV networks, VOD to AVOD systems and websites to mobiles.

The channel claims its content finds resonance with travel connoisseurs the world over.

MUMBAI: Colors has completed its sponsorship roster, signing up 11 advertisers for its talent hunt show India’s Got Talent which begins 22 September.

The broadcaster has roped in Maruti Suzuki as presenting sponsor and Hindustan Unilever as the powered-by sponsor.

It has got nine associate sponsors on-board including Amul Macho, Chutki (mouth freshener), Bisleri, Apollo Tyres, Toshiba LED TVs, Tata Motors (Commercial Vehicles), Kinder Joy, HomeShop18 and Lux toilet soap.

Sources in Colors said the official sponsors will consume 70 to 80 per cent inventory and the balance will be to spot buyers at a premium.

IGT will replace ‘Zindagi Ki Haqiqat se Amna Samna’ which will move to 11 pm slot. It will be up against Dance Ke Superkids and Fear Files (both Zee TV) and C.I.D on Sony Entertainment Television (Set).

Produced by Freemantle, India’s Got Talent will air every Saturday and Sunday at 10 pm. The show provides a platform to talented individuals to perform song, music, dance, mimicry, gags, mime, puppetry, ventriloquism, and magic.

Judged by Kirron Kher, Karan Johar, Malaika Arora Khan and Farah Khan, the show is hosted by Manish Paul and Cyrus Sahukar. The winner of the show will get Rs 2500,000 as the prize money.

Marketing blitz

Colors is spending close to Rs 70-80 million on marketing the show. Being a big-ticket property, it is being promoted across all platforms.

As far as below-the-line marketing goes, Colors had organised ‘Hunar-Divas’ in Lucknow, Ahmedabad and Indore. To drive this activity, the broadcaster has partnered Big FM.

“This is a parade of talent taking place in these cities where 100-150 people will get a chance to showcase their talent. We are aiming to reach out to 3000-5000 people in each of these cities,” Colors marketing head Rajesh Iyer said.

Since the launch of the show coincides with Ganesh Festival, the channel is promoting the show by putting up banners at major Ganpati Pandals in Mumbai. The show is also being promoted in select schools in New Delhi.

Promos of the show will run on channels outside the network (Network18 and TV18) with more than 6000 spots on 44 channels in addition to more than 1500 spots on its own network channels.

Besides television, the broadcaster will roll out ads in leading newspapers across Hindi speaking markets (HSM). IGT hoardings will be put in as many as 700 OOH sites across 22 cities.

The promos of the show will also be aired during the screening of Kareena Kapoor-starrer Heroine during 3500 shows across 475 screens.

Colors is creating a roadblock on YouTube on the launch day. It will do a roadblock on direct-to-home platforms Dish TV and Tata Sky for three days from 20-22 September.

On Dish TV the promos of the show will appear between 8:45–9 pm while on Tata Sky they will air from 9:45-10 pm.