Ajay Verma has joined ebus, an internet technology company based in New Zealand and has moved out of Percept/H as senior vice-president and Mumbai branch head.
eBus, which has branches in Singapore and Thailand has now come to India and aims to quicken the TV commercial management and distribution process. Verma says that the system is completely digital; thus, reducing the ad delivery to an international broadcaster from three to four days to a couple of hours.
“Digital tapeless advertising delivery systems have almost completely replaced tape in the USA and UK. Other countries like Australia and New Zealand have recently switched to a fully electronic delivery system within a very short time,” he adds. The servers for this technology are not available in India; hence, servers in Singapore are being utilized for this.
Verma has served the advertising industry for nearly 16 years. After completing his Master’s degree in management studies from the University of Mumbai, Verma joined Draft FCB as a management trainee. Verma stayed with the agency for six long years and became the group manager in September 1999. Subsequently, he joined Rediffusion — Y&R as account director. This was followed by a one-year stint in Contract Advertising Mumbai as vice-president.
He then moved back again to Rediffusion for a second stint as vice-president and stayed there for three years, before moving out as business head. Verma has worked on brands such as HPCL, Cadbury, Tata Motors, Franklin Templeton, Tata Sky, Amul, CEAT, Godrej and HSB
Verma says, “The two things that attracted me towards this assignment were, one, it was completely new to me. Second, the way the product works. After spending reasonably long in the advertising industry, I realised how this can change the paradigm of the business.”