Kacon Sethi, Tapan Pal and Indira Ganguly have formed a media solutions company, MediaSys Solutions.
The company will provide consultancy to various media companies and will deal in three verticals – sales and marketing, research and distribution placement and unique content.
Sethi, the ex-CEO of K Sera Sera, will be in charge of the sales and marketing function at MediaSys, while Pal will head the research and distribution placement, and Ganguly the unique content function. Pal was previously head of Zenith Media (now Zenith Optimedia) in India before heading the television audience research company aMap and then becoming research head at INX Media. Ganguly has worked on television programming in various television channels.
Commenting on the business structure, Sethi said, “Each vertical will be treated as a separate business unit”. Regarding, the sales and marketing function, Sethi explained that the company would provide sales and marketing support across media, including television, cinema and radio.
The company has recently signed a five-year contract with its first client – Sahara Samay, the news channel business of Sahara India. Sahara Samay has one national channel – Sahara Samay Rashtriya and five focussed channels for the nine states of Uttar Pradesh & Uttaranchal, Bihar & Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh & Chhattisgarh, Delhi NCR & Haryana and Maharashtra. The contract will be reviewed every year.
On the relationship between the companies, Sethi said, “We will go beyond just providing airtime sales support and will be involved in brand development and marketing of these channels besides also advising on editorial content.”
Regarding Sahara Samay, Sethi said that, “The biggest strength of Sahara Samay will be its regional presence” and that this will be used to the company’s advantage in its future growth.
Sethi divulged that MediaSys Solutions will now work on bringing other regional news channels on board in order to “create a cluster of news channels, so that we can be the one-stop-shop, when an advertiser wants to invest in the news genre”. A similar arrangement can be worked out for radio stations.
In the movie genre, Sethi said that the company will look for deals beyond just content tie ups, such as placing an ad just after the censor certificate is displayed. The company will also look at co-branding opportunities.
The other vertical on unique content will look at events and programmes, etc. The vertical on research and distribution placement will provide consultancy or distribution and placement of channels. It will also help media companies to make use of TAM and aMap data.