BYJU’s Divya Gokulnath on 2022: The year of lessons, resilience, and India’s reckoning

“We wanted to learn from our mistakes and I am happy to share that right from advertising standards to the way in which we communicate our offerings to students to the way in which we service them, on all these parameters, we have improved as a collective body.” - Divya Gokulnath, co-founder, Byju's (Representative Image via LinkedIn)

BYJU’s co-founder Divya Gokulnath shares, “I have always believed in facing headwinds head-on. It is simply not enough to sit back and wait for change to come.”

Indian gaming studios see big action in 2022; take bolder, ambitious bets

Nazara is aiming to identify opportunities within the gaming, esports and adtech arenas internationally particularly with a focus on established gaming IP’s/studios, those advancing in technologies like web3, Virtual Reality, and AI.

Several gaming founders and industry executives that Moneycontrol spoke to, expect more gaming-focused funds being set up in the country and global funds to make sizeable investments in the sector in the coming years.

upGrad to increase marketing spends by 40 percent in 2023, plans return on TV as advertiser

upGrad, which works with an in house creative team, will focus on telling real-life success stories in advertisements and other communications. However, Ankit Khirwal says there will be no change in investments in social influencers as they’d continue to endorse the brand even in 2023. (Stills from the ads)

The edtech company’s new marketing plan for 2023 will be focussed on conversation around the mother brand.

CRED takes subversive advertising mainstream. But there’s a flipside to the rise of Credvertising

In hot pursuit of virality, the last few months of 2022 saw brands using various tactics, gimmicks and pranks to garner attention and likes on the internet. The objective is to create curiosity and push consumers to look up for a product or service being promoted. The execution and idea can be a fake fight, meme or bizarre execution that hardly resembles an ad. (Still from the ad)

While there is no defined law on such kind of advertising, ad industry watchdog Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) can take suo moto action against the advertisement.

Deltatech Gaming CEO Shivanandan Pare: More skilled women playing Poker on platform, expect a 70:30 men to women ratio soon

"GST for all players should be charged on the rake earned by the platform. Otherwise, it becomes extremely unfair because as platforms we are not taking any part of the money brought in by the players or the pool, which gets created. It is like asking a stock broker who has started a trading platform to pay GST on the volume of trading being done on the platform. From all the interactions we’ve had with the government officials and decision making bodies it is clear that they understand the way we operate. If it pans out any other way nobody will survive," says Shivanandan Pare

Shivanandan Pare, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer – Deltatech Gaming, on the need for regulations in gaming, poker’s popularity, confusion around GST calculation and IPO plans.