News Broadcasting
#RaceTo272 with Twitter and NDTV’s Graphity
MUMBAI: When it first created Graphity on the occasion of Republic Day, little did NDTV know that its service of sending personalized photographs and messages would create such a flutter on social media, especially Twitter.
On the counting day, 16 May, NDTV has decided to engage its propriety service Graphity on Twitter to tweet real-time results to people who use the hashtag #RaceTo272 from @NDTVElections. The tweet will have an info-graphic representing the latest party/alliance position at that moment.
How does it work?
A little over three months since its launch and NDTV’s platform already boasts a client list that reads: Rajinikanth, Jai Ho, the BJP, Hero and Star Vijay among others. Indeed, when Rajini finally decided to be a part of Twitter, his first few followers received autographed photographs of the southern legend, courtesy Graphity.
While the popular trend has been for people and companies to turn to Graphity to attract users, more prominently on Twitter, the service is not restricted only to Twitter, and can operate for web and SMS as well. According to NDTV Convergence CTO Kawaljit Singh Bedi, “The technology is such that we can monitor any social media. But Twitter is the best medium to do it.”
On Twitter, Graphity works on keywords and hash tags; it listens to them and sends out the desired outcome, as requested by the client or NDTV itself. A case in point is Star Vijay, which utilized the service for its show Super Singer where hash tags were tracked and personalized messages from finalists were sent for a week before the finale. “We wanted to be a brand that people follow. Super Singer is synonymous with Star Vijay so the conversation would revolve round us. This helped us deepen the bond and make it stronger,” says Star Vijay digital media strategist Paul Samji.
NDTV first used Graphity for one of its own activities in January, post which, Twitter sat up and took notice and started routing people who required similar services to NDTV. It took four months to come up with the service and if anything, all that hard work is now bearing fruit. It takes one or at the most two days to form an idea of what the client wants. Using the content management system (CMS), users give controls to the software. Firstly, the ‘listener’ service listens to hash tags by connecting to Twitter and secondly, the listener application connects to the ‘pusher’ application. The response page then sends out the desired outcome that is modified to fit a web page as well as various operating systems.
According to sources, rates for Graphity have ranged from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 18 lakh.
The inspiration for Graphity came from BCCI’s photographs of Sachin Tendulkar bidding farewell to the cricketing world and his fans. After speaking to various companies, including some in the US, NDTV decided to do it alone. A team of four engineers helped set up Graphity. “We have built it like a platform. It suggests an inpoint and outpoint for sending commands to execute outcome. These can be text, image, video, information or a combination of any of these,” says Bedi. “There are two more brands we are working with. The requests are only increasing because brands see the value in Graphity.”
Given Graphity’s growing popularity, it’s quite possible that in the near future, the service may evolve into more than just a branding exercise used by brands to get maximum exposure.
News Broadcasting
Senior media executive Madhu Soman exits Zee Media
Former Reuters and Bloomberg leader says he leaves with “no regrets” after brief stint at WION and Zee Business
NOIDA: Madhu Soman, a veteran of global newsrooms and media sales floors, has stepped away from Zee Media Corporation after a short stint steering business strategy for WION and Zee Business.
In a reflective LinkedIn note marking his departure, Soman said his time within the network’s corridors was always likely to be brief. “Some chapters close faster than expected,” he wrote, signalling the end of a nearly two-year spell in which he oversaw both editorial partnerships and commercial strategy.
Soman joined Zee Media in 2022 after more than a decade abroad with Reuters and Bloomberg, returning to India to take on the role of chief business officer for WION and Zee Business. His mandate was ambitious: bridge the newsroom and the revenue desk while expanding digital and broadcast reach.
During the stint, Zee Business reached break-even for the first time since its launch in 2005, while WION refreshed programming and strengthened its digital footprint across platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.
But Soman suggested the cultural fit proved uneasy. Describing himself as a “cultural misfit”, he hinted at deeper tensions between editorial instincts shaped in global newsrooms and the realities of India’s television news ecosystem.
Before joining Zee, Soman spent more than seven years at Bloomberg in Hong Kong as head of broadcast sales for Asia-Pacific, expanding the company’s news syndication business across several markets. Earlier, he held senior editorial roles at Reuters, overseeing online strategy in India and managing Reuters Video Services from London.
His career began in television and wire reporting, including a stint with ANI during the 1999 Kargil conflict, before moving into digital publishing as India’s internet media landscape took shape.
Now, after nearly three decades in broadcast and digital media, Soman is leaving Delhi NCR and returning to his hometown, Trivandrum.
Exhausted, he admits. But unbowed. And with one quiet line that sums up the journey: he didn’t sell his soul — because some things, after all, are not for sale.
