Chairperson: Sashwati Banerjee, Managing Director, Sesame Workshop India
Co-Chair & Moderator: Asif Syed, Editor, Current Newspaper

Jury Expert View: Soumya Sarkar, National Editor, Mint

Workshop presenters (name, organization):

• Ankur Agarwal, Head – Product and Content, Alive, Times Mobile Limited, India
• Akhil Mathur, Researcher, Samudaayvaani, “Bell Labs And Radioactive Cr 90.4 MHz”, India
• Vishal Anand, Chief Product Officer, NewsHunt, Ver Se Innovation Private Ltd., India
• Mallesh B, DGM Sales & Key Accounts, CoMix On-The-Go, Zero-Sum Wireless SolutionIndia Pvt. Ltd
• Abhishek Sood, NexGTV, Digivive Services Pvt. Ltd., India
• Gaurav, ZengaTV, Zenga Media Pvt Ltd., India
• Sagarika Deb, Founder, Wild Blossoms Project, India
• Yogendra Singh, Technical Lead, Palm Reader, Mango Technologies Pvt. Ltd., India

Objectives of the workshop:

• Focus on India’s oral society to have multi-lingual option of accessing and exercising their participation in accordance.
• Role, impact and importance of content services in News & Journalism
• Showcasing the best practices in terms of how entertainment is reaching out through themobile content and medium.
• Role, impact and importance of content services in Entertainment & focus on App
• Developer community for better understanding on Delivery of EntertainmentPresentations

The first speaker of the day was Ankur Agarwal from Alive. He focused on the app ALIVE that is creating a buzz in the market.It is based on an augmented reality which means transforming a real world image into a multimedia experience. It’s a monomedia app meaning the user is in the same media. The content it has is dynamic. It’s a really good app because it’s merging your real life and your multimedia life which is what all the things around us are trying to do, let it be your phone or your tablets. The opportunity for them to expand is huge as they are just doing 500 augmentations at this time.

The second speaker of the session was Akhil Mathur from Community Media. He explained that India being so diverse, it is not possible for the local media to cover all the things required, therefore a new type of media is evolving called Community Media. It deals with the content that is relevant to their own community. Take the case of rural India, people might take about agricultural issues or farming practices. In urban areas, people might take about road issues or infrastructure problems. Community Radio is a form of community media in which the content is first checked and then broadcasted over a frequency. There are some of issues that the company is facing like technological issues, government issues which restrict the reach of the radio. Therefore the better technology is mobile web as it is more interactive and it gives the user more freedom to share their views. He talked about the product that they developed called Community Web, which takes into account both community media and mobile web. It is a really good way to bring the people of a community together and help them discuss problems that they face as a community.

The Third speaker was Vishal Anand from NewsHunt. He showed us an app that gives us an opportunity to read newspapers in any regional language we want. The best part about the app is that it is available on all the platforms, from the cheapest of mobile phones to any of the high end phones. It is India’s favourite news application.74% of the literate population of India can only read and write in their own respective regional language, which is what NewsHunt tries to solve. It’s a good thing to share news with people in every language that suits their needs.

The fourth speaker Mallesh B,CoMix On-The-Go explained that they are trying to create the nostalgia in people on a digital platform by making them read whichever comics they like. Everyone must have read comics at some point in their lives.They are only trying to create the same feeling you had as a child when you read those comics. The best part is that they don’t just scan the comic, rather they embed it which makes it a really good experience to read. They spend a lot of time in the digitisation of the comic so that it is perfect for the readers. The way that they differ from the other comic apps is by their business model as they strike different deals with different publishers depending on the publishers need. This is the only comic app is available on all the platforms on all the devices. It is a great app because it provides you with a way to remember your childhood.

The fifth speaker was Abhishek Sood from NexGTV. He explained that entertainment has always been a need in people’s life from a time when people used to gather at someone’s house to watch television to a time when everyone has a smartphone. They provide 140 channels as well as video on demand along with an archive of 7 days for some channels which is pretty incredible. The best part is that they provide the services of all platforms from cheapest phones to high end smartphones and also on all networks even if it is only a 2g network. A television on a smartphone is a new idea for the people of India but this is a technology that is here to stay and the apps like NexGTV will provide a great experience to its users.

The sixth speaker of the session was Gaurav from ZengaTV. Zenga provides a platform for mobile television which is a competitor to the app NexGTv. It provides a low cost content. They run a flagship service through their mobile TV platform called ZengaTv which serves content over a 2.5G n above network. They are one of the largest providers to YouTube today. The app provides a seamless experience to stream different events like a cricket match etc. The app works in areas having lower bandwidth as well. This app will provide a good competition to the other television apps on the different platforms.

The seventh speaker of the session was Sagarika Deb, Wild Blossoms.She explained that ‘Wild Blossoms’ app is like a world’s first internet girl band. The motto of the app is to make sure that distance doesn’t get in the way of talent and recognition. The app uses modern day technologies around the world including many vocalists and musicians. The real reason behind creating this app was to provide a platform to all kinds of people with class or caste not acting as a barrier. People can sit at home and very easily be a part of this app and fulfil their dream. As we say that music is a language of peace and with this app wild blossoms is trying to bring it together in one place. They are trying to make a difference in the worldand somewhere down the line they have brought the world together. I think it is a really creative idea to create music over the internet. As the technology is growing so much, I think she will really succeed with this idea.

The eight speaker of the session was Yogendra Singh from Palm reader. This app predicts our life by reading lines and symbols embedded in our palm. It is available on android, IOs and windows phones. The key feature of this application is to check your palm which leads to certain questions and based on your answer it predicts your lifeline and traits. The success rate is 90% according to the viewers. They are working on an easy way in which all you have to do is click a photo of your palm and automatically it will provide the predictions.

Summary
In all it was a great session filled with some really innovative and creative ideas. Thepresentations in general had everything that you need to know about the products but some people did give some unnecessary points.