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Techzone ties up with Times Music to offer devotional content
Mumbai: Techzone, the aggregator, developer, publisher and distributor of entertainment content, has partnered with record company Times Music to create devotional based WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and CRBT (Color Ring Back Tone) products.
This tie up will enable Techzone to service Times Music’s devotional content to operators like Reliance, Tata, Loop and MTS.
The strategic tie-up will also boost VAS revenues, the company said.
Techzone director Naveen Bhandari said, “We are a young technology and media company, and are always exploring opportunities to innovate in use of technologies to ensure supremacy in the competitive VAS technology space. The market for devotional content is emerging as an important category in VAS today and we are targeting leadership position in this niche which approximately has a market size of Rs 6 billion. We are very excited of the potential that this tie up offers. The sheer range of devotional music available with Times Music and our reach and expertise in the VAS arena is a potent package.”
Times Music COO Mandar Thakur said, “Times Music has devotional content for every major Indian deity and festival celebrated in the far corners of India. The content has been doing exceptionally well for the past 3 years and we‘ve see a huge growth in its demand. Hence the challenge for us now, was to ensure availability of this content to every mobile user. This is exactly what we hope to achieve through this tie-up with Techzone.”
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Inshorts Group chief Deepit Purkayastha joins IAB video council for Southeast Asia and India
The co-founder and chief executive of the short-form content platform has been inducted into the IAB SEA+India Video Council, giving India a stronger voice in shaping digital video frameworks
NOIDA: India has long been the world’s most chaotic, multilingual and mobile-first digital market. Now, one of its most prominent short-video executives is getting a seat at the table where the rules are written.
Deepit Purkayastha, co-founder and chief executive of Inshorts Group, has been selected as a member of the IAB SEA+India Video Council for 2026. Run by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the council brings together senior leaders from Southeast Asia and India to shape standards, best practices and measurement frameworks for the fast-evolving video and digital advertising ecosystem.
The timing is pointed. According to the IAMAI-Kantar Internet in India Report 2025, over 588 million Indians are now consuming short-video content, with growth increasingly driven by rural and non-metro audiences. India’s active internet user base has crossed 950 million, with 57 per cent of users now coming from rural markets. Yet the frameworks that govern how video consumption is measured and monetised were largely designed for single-language, Western markets and have struggled to keep pace with the scale, diversity and complexity of India’s digital landscape.
Purkayastha is no stranger to these debates. He already serves on the AI Council at Marketing and Media Alliance India and as co-chair of the Digital Entertainment Committee at the Internet and Mobile Association of India. His induction into the IAB SEA+India Video Council extends that influence into the global video standards arena.
Inshorts Group sits squarely at the intersection of these forces. Its flagship product, Inshorts, India’s highest-rated short news app, reaches 12 million active users with 60-word news summaries. Its sister platform, Public App, reaches 80 million monthly active users across more than 700 districts and 12 languages, serving communities that most global platforms barely register.
Purkayastha said the opportunity was about building something more representative. “India today sits at the centre of the global video ecosystem, but the frameworks that define how value is created and measured have not always kept pace with the realities of our market,” he said. “Being part of the IAB SEA+India Video Council is an opportunity to contribute to a more representative and future-ready approach, one that accounts for diversity in language, context, and user intent.”
As a council member, Purkayastha will contribute to shaping regional standards across video advertising, measurement and platform governance, with a focus on frameworks that are native to India’s multilingual, mobile-first ecosystem rather than imported from global benchmarks designed elsewhere.
For years, India has been content to play by rules written for other markets. Purkayastha’s induction is a signal that it is done waiting to be consulted and ready to start writing them.
