| Sunil R Nair | |
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Sunil R Nair |
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| Born | April 18, 1972 Maharashtra (India) |
| Residence | Mumbai |
| Alma mater | Pune University |
| Occupation | CEO of nautanki.tv |
| Children | 1 |
| Website | |
| www.nautanki.tv | |
Sunil R Nair, born April 18, 1972 is an Indian businessman. One of the earliest adopters of the internet ecosystem, he has evangelized the ecosystem model of the internet and has written several articles on the topic. He has been a visionary who has anticipated the changes in the media horizon. His 'entertainment is the next driver of the internet' talk has led to a lot of content creators changing the way they look at broadband content and broadcast media.
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The son of a middle class labour union leader, T Ramachandran Nair and Leela Nair, Sunil was born in the city of Pune in Maharashtra. T Ramachandran Nair had migrated to Bombay in 1965 and had joined GE Elpro as a machinist post his diploma in State Transport Corporation. T Ramachandran Nair moved to Pune in 1967 and married Leela. In 1971 T R Nair joined Telco, where he was appointed as the General Secretary of the Labour Union. He was responsible for the two major lockouts that Telco had in its history. T R Nair eventually gave up militant labour unionism and joined mainstream management as a Labour Welfare Officer and went on to be a Labour Relations Incharge until he retired in 1999. He died in March 2008. Leela worked for the state government as a hospital supervisor and then medical officer at the David Sassoon Hospital. She retired in 2001 and now is involved in social causes.
Sunil was born in the Jehangir nursing home in Pune on 18 April 1972. His primary years education was at Erin Nagarwala National Model School and then at the Rosary School, Pune. He was an average student and passed his schooling in 1988 and thereafter senior school through Nowrosjee Wadia junior college, with specialization in science. He graduated in 1993 from Pune University with a BSc in Physics and went on to do a Masters in Management from the same university. He also completed a two year Diploma in Systems Administration from National Computing Centre, UK.
Sunil started his working life with a small time reseller of CDAC interning as a salesman of Indian language software. He was eventually absorbed by CDAC to work on their launch team for the Indian Language Word Processor called LEAP. He along with a few software coders started a venture called Pixel Technologies where he eventually decided to be an employee and move away from being an entrepreneur. Sunil in this tenure was responsible for BARZ a device driver which allowed barcodes to be printed on ordinary paper using any kind of printer. The company installed the software at over 4000 locations and won many awards for innovation. The first batch of supply chain integration at Tata Motors had the Barz software as an integral part of the system. Post the dotcom bust of 2000 in India, Sunil lost his job and a lot of money he had invested in various dotcoms. He did not do any active employment between the years of 2001 and 2003 and instead spent time consulting businesses in Travel and Tourism, ELearning and Retail. He in this period helped set up Kalypso Adventures, the first adventure tourism and eco tourism venture in Kerala
Sunil moved to Mumbai in 2003 and joined Headstart Advertising as the General Manager Strategy. In 2004 he joined Eventus as the Head of Planning and in 2005, Hungama.com where he worked with Neeraj Roy in various roles. He has also worked with Pinstorm and the now defunct web division of Percept Advertising as the Business Head. His last employer was Brand Portrait where Sunil setup the Digital division and was its CEO.
There have been several attempts at slander on his name by people who he has worked with or has been responsible for being removed for non performance. The most common accusation against him is that he was sacked from various organisations for non performance. This stand is disputed by people who have known him for years.
An online venture that started off when Vikram Prabhu and Herumb Khot approached Sunil to write a business plan. It currently has a team of 29 and is one of the more interesting venture coming from India.
Sunil's first real job. This company was funded by professionals from the Telco (Tata Motors)MSD division. It went on to install a barcoding integration system at over 4000 locations. Create an ecommerce marketplace with a transaction engine. Eventually went down in the bust of 2000 and was sold to a local software company.
A loosely knit idea venture which never took off. It was to be an incubator of ideas which would take ventures to a level where they could be funded.
A retail chain of cyber cafes+meeting places+bookshop kind of place where students could not just use the net but form a community. Started with 3 outlets which were sold to a local businessman in Pune who converted them into SIFY cyber cafes.
Nautanki.tv has been around for just over 27 months and were one of the first in India to look at entertainment as a driver of internet consumption and as a subset the use of this online entertainment to engage consumers in the online space.
While the rest of the media buying agencies are stuck on banners and text they have gone ahead and created a network of widgets. This network focuses on bringing to the consumer video entertainment content where ever he is on the net. They have replicated the Google adsense model to sign on websites and blogs who can get video content free of cost and also in turn get paid for every view that's generated off their pages. The widget webcasts a continuous stream of 'short format' content from TV channels / content creators / film makers etc. The consumer can choose what he wants to see - the experience is similar to TV, with the added advantage of all the bells and whistles of internet like clickable video ads and so on.
Media agencies and brands can buy ad spots on Nautanki.tv for as low of Re 1 a view and have better control on the kind of moneys they spend promoting their brands. The engagement on our widget is far greater since the consumer is willing to wait for a 30 second video ad to play out before the content he wants to watch
Currently Star Tv, Viacom 18, ECAVS, Times Now, Fashion TV, live India, Mi Marathi, Music Today and BollywoodHungama.com are live on the Nautanki.tv Network. Content production houses like Toonz, Lion Productiions, Fun Little Movies have their content live on the channels. With this play Nautanki.tv is now the largest repository of South Asian video content in the world.
Hungama.com / VMIL has taken up a speculated 51% holding in nautanki.tv and has committed close to INR 50 crores spread across cash infusion, content, ad sales, infrastructure and so on. This figure has been denied by both Sunil R Nair and Neeraj Roy. The details are private since both companies are privately held - but it is widely seen in the industry that Nautanki is Neeraj's play in online video, though the site has long been overtaken by YouTube in India, Zoom TV and other video content houses popular with the Indian audience if one looks at it as a destination play. As a network there is no such play that exists in the world.