Game-changing Initiatives

In any business, staying ahead of the curve is very important. And so is innovation. At the rate life and technology are changing, if we don’t evolve alongside it, we’ll be obsolete in no time! One must stay ahead of the trends to ensure the right amount of preparedness for anything to come.

I still remember when social media had just about come into the picture, and how communications campaigns had started to evolve to include all social media spaces. I was always fascinated with this space and knew that there was so much more to this space than an added communication channel. But I wanted to explore the digital domain a little more.?

I remember having a particular vision for how I’d like the digital world to be of better use to us. It was still early days and the digital space was evolving, and I wanted to ensure that we were on top of all the information this new world was giving us. There was a lot of noise, and sense needed to be made of that noise. I wanted to make sure that we and our clients took away the positives from this ecosystem and not the negatives.

That is the time I remember meeting a young and enthusiastic Binesh Kutty (and come to think of it, he doesn’t seem to age physically :)). He was then making a transition from the world of journalism to what he didn’t know then, to us! Binesh has always been up for a challenge, and never afraid of radical out- of-the-box ideas that can cause great and positive change!?

We had an absolute blast setting up the Live! Newsroom and seeing it come alive every day, and to be able to forecast insights that are crucial to us and the clients, was just such an amazing thrill.

This past year has shown us how critical?technology?is. It has also shown us how we can’t rest. If we want to grow, be creative and stay ahead, we have to keep pushing boundaries. For that, we have to stay open to learning—from our colleagues, from the young minds who join us every year, from whoever has interesting ideas.?

Binesh is the one who entertains all my ideas that push boundaries, and I can’t be more thankful to have him on the team. Here is Binesh’s story.

For Binesh, GBCW happened at a time when he was at a crossroads in his career, having already been a journalist for a decade, working with CyberMedia as well as names like NDTV and Jagran. However, his role as a journalist had not been a typical one. He had had experience in being part of interesting and different initiatives in every role, whether it was creating India’s first interactive print magazine, Living Digital, or setting up DARE, India’s first entrepreneurial magazine.

“Since I was a kid, I was tech inclined and extremely curious about how things work. My Dad, who earlier a government employee at All India Radio and later moved to a PSU (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) broke his pension fund to buy me a personal computer in the ‘90s. And what did I do the day I got it? I took it apart to see the insides. And then began my journey of exploration, research, and implementation in the early days of the Internet. I used to frequent BB (bulletin boards) and connect with fellow tech enthusiasts over iRC (Internet Relay Chat) from across the globe to setting up a blog online when HTML was ‘the’ language of choice to grabbing the attention of an Editor due to this and landing a job with PCQuest – India’s first and top tech publication,” shares Binesh.??

For Binesh, it has always been a matter of doing something new and exciting, involving positive disruption. At CyberMedia, he got hands on with enterprise hardware and software, as well as consumer electronics. He frequented tech shows on television like Zee Business’s Gadget Show as the ‘gadget guru’, was on the tech audit panel of NDTV Gadget Guru awards via. PCQuest. He roamed around the country organizing and speaking & moderating panel discussions at SME events for PCQuest and IDC – where he got exposed to a variety of sectors and their challenges. He interacted with eminent business tycoons and upcoming and promising entrepreneurs in his role at DARE.

Eventually, he reached a point where he felt he was done with the media part of things and wanted to do something different. Binesh put out a word that he was looking for a change. And the word he had put out there in his network was “I am not looking to fill up some vacancy. I am looking to do something that has not been done before.” This is what fell upon Prema’s ears, and soon enough he got a call from her asking to meet for a coffee session.?

At their meeting Prema pulled out an A4-size paper and mapped out the concept of GBCW Live!?Newsroom. She narrated her vision, helping Binesh understand the need of every agency in the industry to have a nerve center. Prema, in fact, had a vision for the industry to channelise the energies of the ample intellect in the firm and the eco-system that had largely been engaged in doing transactional jobs.

She clearly wanted to do something that had not been done before—a radical dream that only a few knew about at the time.?“I had this germ of an idea for over 2 years, and no one really could grasp the pulse of it, till I met Binesh,” says Prema. The crucial question was: Could there be a nerve centre that could be formed in the firm and brought alive? From that day to this one, “Live! Newsroom now wins big businesses on the basis of tech innovation and communication insights. The focus has never been on ROI; rather it has been on ROPE (Returns on Pain Eliminated) for the client, media, and the teams at the firm,” he points out.

Among the challenges he has faced has been getting a buy in from the various stakeholders. Prema has always encouraged his radical ideas, demonstrating entrepreneurial spirit in the firm. Binesh has remained focused on being able to consistently produce communication intelligence—for the client, the firm and journalists—while also acknowledging the need for innovation.

Dwelling more on the challenges and accomplishments, Binesh mentions a particular crisis project as his big break that came after two years of being in the system. “It was an ask that involved providing a succinct 10 bullet point daily brief for the global head of an International sporting body. The catch? It had to be created from a dataset that involved news and social media chatter from 16 countries which was over 50K datapoints per day – from which we had to distill, connect the dots, and then prepare the daily report,” he shares.

Another milestone was the Nestlé crisis during which, he says, “Besides communication insights, we were able to help the client on marketing and legal insights through current and historical media coverage.”

Since then, he has worked on several interesting projects – providing intelligence and insights to the ambassador of a country in crisis spanning several geographies, the sports minister of another country in crisis, one of India’s biggest crisis in the BFSI sector—the Nirav Modi scam’s impact on the reputation of Punjab National Bank, and so much more.

His achievements are not limited to crisis though. Some of these includes the creation of the media intelligence app (Web, Android, and iOS) – which works on a crowd sourcing model and provides media intelligence to every employee of the firm on his/her fingertips. This is one of its kind in the industry. He has helped setup a command center for one of the world’s reputed F&B giants for getting dashboarded insights from multiple countries crunched into visually-aided actionable insights. He has created a bespoke Influencer ROI Measurement Dashboard for an international beauty brand in China – where the data stream and data platform is all Chinese. “Tech innovation is not limited by industries, geographies, cultures, races, and languages,” he adds.

He is the go to guy to know about anything that is happening anywhere in the world. His thirst for knowledge, and his tech ways to keep the tab on the pulse of everything has always amazed Prema. “He is the man with solutions for EVERYTHING. He has never said no to any problem or challenge sent his way. He always comes up with some solution or the other – not necessarily restricted to tech problems. He smartly uses tech for solving almost all problems though,” adds Prema. “While people drop terms like AI (Artificial Intelligence), ML (Machine Learning), NLU (Natural Language Understanding), Predictive Analytics, etc because it is trendy – if you really want to understand what these terms actually mean and more importantly – their implications and implementation for the communications industry, speak with Binesh.”

At the time of his fourth-year anniversary with the firm, Prema said to him “We have to reach for the moon.” And that is what he feels GBCW does for him. “When I wake up, I am looking forward to getting to work. It is never the deadlines – but rather the thought of doing something different – every day. I thrive on ‘problem solving’ more than anything” he says, as yet another satisfied member of the GBCW family since the past 8.5 years and counting.

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