MUMBAI: Three OOH agencies from Gurgaon – NS Publicity, Salt OOH and Explomedia - have come together to form a new OOH agency by the name Discoveri Media.
NS Publicity promoter KD Maheshwari will be Dicoveri Media joint managing director and chief financial officer while Salt OOH founder and chief strategist Ankur Rastogi will serve as joint managing director and chief strategist and Explomedia president Sunjjoy Dhadhich will be joint managing director and chief sales controller. NS Publicity partner Narendra Bhaskar will now take up the post of joint managing director and chief operations/asset procurement controller for the agency.
According to a statement released by the newly formed agency, Discoveri Media stands at over Rs 1 billion annual turnover at the time of formation which resulted in a strategic merger of NS Publicity, Salt OOH & Explomedia. It also holds 90 per cent of the OOH market in Gurgaon with significant presence in traditional media in south/central Delhi and Faridabad.
Discoveri Media is an equal joint ownership which has been formed after NS publicity, Salt OOH and Explomedia have diluted their existing stake holding in their private ventures into a common pool to venture the path of becoming India’s largest OOH media company by 2014.
Discoveri Media also features all the tactical Ambient Media Properties of SALTOOH within premium offices, airports, Cinemas, malls and colleges in Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Chennai, etc. Discoveri Media does not capture NS Publicity’s `media business in Rajasthan.
Maheshwari said, “Delhi NCR is the most critical Outdoor Media Market, which is represented through small and Privately controlled Media Houses. It was important to work-out a business case around a common objective to grow together and we are glad we have achieved it must faster than we thought.”
Rastogi said, “It’s like giving shape and life to a strategy which has worked wonders for all. Survival is the mother of all inventions” and I believe that this is what made us plan and conceptualize a strategic merger proposition for companies who had an equal hunger for growth while making sure that this growth is channelized well and does not take away the challenges and the rewards of entrepreneurship.”
Dhadhich added, “The future calls for like-minded people to not compete with each other but to synergize together and help create a world of possibilities, not experienced before. It was a big decision for Explomedia which is operating standalone for last decade but the merits of the new business model had all of us impressed and therefore the merger.”
Narendra Bhaskar-Partner, NS Publicity mentions this as the next five years of journey conquered in just 5 months. "We were sure of our growth but having it as a result of an early amalgamation of bright/Aggressive OOH entrepreneurs and tactical businesses was a new way for me. The scale it brings is evident but I must highlight the expertise it offers to the new venture. This collective expertise will take us to the next level of growth very soon," he says.
Discoveri Media has been operational as a pilot project since last three months wherein all the promoters involved were trying to negotiate the bottlenecks.
