Videocon presents India Youth Icon Awards (Live on the internet courtesy nautanki.tv) - Press Release

Videocon presents India Youth Icon Awards will be webcast live on nautanki.tv and its network of 16,000 plus publisher sites, saharasamay.com and several other websites on 1st October at 8pm. In addition to this the embed code for the live stream will be available for anyone to use on their website.

Nautanki.tv is powering the live streaming of the Videocon India Youth Icon Awards with its simultaneous broadcast on television. This live stream is expected to garner some of the largest viewership numbers on the Indian Internet space for live streaming of any television event.

Videocon India Youth Icon Awards is a platform to recognize and celebrate individuals who serve as examples for others to emulate. The awards identify leaders at a young age whereby they are celebrated as icons for others to follow.

The Advisory Board for the event include Kiran Bedi, Venugopal Dhoot, Usha Uthup, Dr Naresh Trehan, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Shyam Benegal, Leander Paes and Shabana Azmi.

There are nine categories for the Awards - Private Entrepreneurship, Social Justice & Welfare, Entertainment, Arts, Technology, Politics, Media, Sports and India Youth Icon of the Year.

The nominees for these categories include big names like Rahul Gandhi, Ajay Bijli, Sachin Pilot, Priyanka Chopra, Abhinav Bindra, Priya Dutt, Hrithik Roshan, Omar Abdullah, A R Rahman, Shahrukh Khan, Barkha Dutt, Abhishek Bachchan, Saina Nehwal, Rajdeep Sardesai, Vijender Singh, M. S. Dhoni and Neeraj Roy among others.

The live webcast will take place on 1st October 2009 at 8pm on http://live.nautanki.tv/india-youth-icon-awards/.

The live web stream page will also host a Facebook Connect and a Twitter application. This will enable people watching the event on http://live.nautanki.tv/india-youth-icon-awards/ to post comments and discuss the awards real time and create a viral effect around the event. This effort will ensure that the event is more participative and interactive.

In addition to this, the Facebook community of fans of the India Youth Icon Awards has grown to over 4700 members and they have interacted regarding their choice of the winner with over 1500 comments in the last couple of weeks.

In the past, Nautanki.tv has successfully live streamed the General Election 2009 (with Zee News) and the Union Budget 2009 (with UTVi) on the internet.

About Nautanki.tv:
An online video broadcasting network that has content partners such as Star Plus, Colors, NDTV Imagine, Zoom, FTV, MTV, Channel [V], UTVi, Zee News and Live India on board, Nautanki.tv generates as many as 38 million views daily from 6 million unique viewers spread over 16,000 websites. The Nautanki.tv video player is now available on a number of popular sites including, AOL Video, Truveo, ICQ, Indyarocks, Bollywood Hungama, Biigpiic, and Facebook. Nautanki.tv has also harnessed the social media space around blogs and niche websites by allowing the blogger to embed a widget that carries the content from the 26 channels it partners. Hungama owns a majority stake in the company.

Webtalkies '09 takes off!

Nautanki.tv (www.nautanki.tv) presents Webtalkies ’09, an online short film festival which will take off on 1 September 09 on Mirch Masala, a channel owned by Nautanki.tv.

Entries for Webtalkies closed on 15th August 09 and we have with us films from across the country – interesting takes on universal topics like AIDS, love, money, suicide, marriage, art, poverty, sexual abuse, poetry, literature, supernatural, time, dreams and many more.

The films are from three to fifteen minutes, both fiction and non-fiction, across genres and languages.

Out of the 100 plus entries received for Webtalkies, 26 films were shortlisted in terms of concept, originality, storytelling and technical quality.

The shortlisted films will be screened on nautanki.tv from the 1st to the 30TH OF September 09.

They will be simultaneously judged by our panel of judges including Amole Gupte (originator, writer and creative director of Taare Zameen Par and actor in Kaminey and over a 100 student films), Paromita Vohra (Documentary Filmmaker and Writer, has made award winning films like Q2P, Unlimited Girls and Cosmopolis and writer of Khamosh Paani which won the Best Screenplay award at KARA), Niraj Voralia (Editor of Shwaas, India’s entry for the Oscars, Valu, Dahavi F and National Award winning Marathi film, Vastupurush) and Mahesh Aney (National Film Award winning cinematographer for Swades) – all exceptionally talented in their own fields - who will rate the films according to various criteria - Direction, Cinematography, Editing and Sound.

Jeroo Sam Patel, Chief Operating Officer, Nautanki.tv says, “Nautanki.tv has been encouraging independent filmmakers since inception via Mirch Masala – our in-house channel for independent short films and documentaries. Mirch Masala helps filmmakers showcase their films and also earn revenues while they are at it. Webtalkies is the first of its kind online film festival which will also have the winning films screened in theatres and other mediums.”

“We believe that the audience is very interested in independent content, as it is original, experimental and not run of the mill. The idea is to create platforms for independent content providers and interest them enough to create content and screen it to a larger audience across mediums instead of restricting it to traditional mediums alone,” she added.

The best three films will be chosen by the jury as per the following categories and will be awarded prize monies as follows:
• Best Short Film: Rs 50,000
• Best Editor: Rs 25,000
• Best Cinematographer: Rs 25,000
In addition, the film that gets the highest number of views on nautanki.tv will be awarded the
• Audience Choice Award and a cash prize of Rs. 30,000

The winning films will be announced and screened in INOX, Nariman Point and filmmakers can interact with the jury on various aspects of filmmaking.

Viewers can also rate, comment and review the films. The best 5 comments/reviews will win tickets to the Webtalkies screening at INOX, Nariman Point

About Nautanki.tv

Nautanki.tv is an online video broadcast platform based in Bombay and has the largest viewership of Entertainment content in South Asia. We have over 30 million videos viewed everyday through our network of widgets placed across 11,000 plus blogs and websites on the internet space. We work with some of the biggest names in the television industry and have a bouquet of television channels like Star Plus, Colors, MTV, Channel V, Zoom, ITN UK and Zee News to name a few.

Nautanki.tv owns an online channel called 'Mirch Masala' which showcases short films and documentaries. It provides opportunity and a platform to filmmakers across the world to screen their films and generate revenue on them. The film festival will run on Mirch Masala.

WIN FREE TICKETS!!

You can also rate, comment and review the films. The best 5 comments/reviews
will win tickets to the Webtalkies screening at INOX, Nariman Point which
will be attended by our award winning jury members - Amole Gupte, Creative
Director, Niraj Voralia, Film Editor, Mahesh Aney, Cinematographer and
Paromita Vohra, Documentary Film maker.

For more details click here:

http://nautanki.tv/site_media/webtalkies/

Webtalkies - Shortlisted Films

The following is the list of the 26 shortlisted films for Webtalkies '09 :

'A'- Parikshit Marathe
Arabi Rumaal - Bardroy Barretto
Clued Into You - Shoa Hussain
Coin - Rahul Bhole
Ehsaas - Tony Fernandez
Escape - Rahul Bhole & Manish Rohit
Goodbye Thackeray - Samir Ahmed Sheikh
Guitaar - A.Vinod
In The Middle of Nowhere - Divyang Thakkar
Jack Anand - Vinit Kanojia & Paritosh Bhole
Johnny Sharma - Paritosh Bhole & Deep Panjwani
Kisna - Rahul Malpe
Lets Have Coffee - Supriyo Maitra
Naalu Mazhapaatakal - Jubith Nambradth
Picture This - Divyang Thakkar
Reviving Toru Dutt - Deep Panjwani & Ravi Rajput
Rewriting The Rules - Miriam Chandy Menacherry
Sorry - Rahul Shanklya
Stranger - Rahul Desai
The Jihad Symphony - Nirman Deepak
The Razor's Edge - Sunny Lahiri
The Reptile Home - Yashowardhan Kauns
Unveiled - Aparna Purohit
When Silence Sings - Leela Roy Ghosh
Zero Error - Divyang Thakkar
The Fourth Dimension - Sunny Lahiri


These films will run on Mirch Masala from the 1st to the 30th of September 2009. These films will simultaneously be sent to our jury members who will rate them according to various criteria - Direction, Cinematography, Editing and Sound.

The list of the winning films will be put up on the 1st of October 09.

All the best people!! :)

Webtalkies Jury

Presenting the jury for Webtalkies 09 - an online short film festival on Nautanki.tv :

Paromita Vohra - Writer and Filmmaker

Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker and writer whose work plays with fiction and non-fiction to focus on ideas of gender, urban life and popular culture.

Her films as director include the documentaries Morality TV aur Loving Jehad: Ek Manohar Kahani (Best Short Doc International Video Festival of Kerala 2008), Q2P (Best Documentary, IFFLA and Best Documentary, Bollywood and Beyond, Stuttgart, 2007), Where’s Sandra?, Work In Progress: At the WSF, Cosmopolis: Two Tales of a City, Unlimited Girls (Women’s News Award, Women’s Film Festival in Seoul; Best Documentary, Aaina Film Festival), A Woman’s Place, A Short Film About Time and Annapurna: Goddess of Food.

She is the writer of the feature Khamosh Pani ( Silent Waters), about a woman whose life is transformed by growing fundamentalism in a Pakistani village (Dir: Sabiha Sumar) which won the Best Screenplay Award at the KARA Film Festival and the Best Film at the Locarno Film Festival. She has also written the documentaries A Few Things I Know About Her (Silver Conch,MIFF 2002, National Award for Best Documentary) , If You Pause and Skin Deep.

She writes extensively for print, both fiction and non-fiction, teaches scriptwriting as visiting faculty at various universities and has done considerable work with young people with a focus on radio. She is currently working on a non-fiction book.

Niraj Voralia – Film Editor

Niraj is an FTII graduate and has edited a number of feature films which include Shwaas (Dir: Sandeep Sawant) which was nominated as India’s entry for the Oscars, Valu (Dir: Umesh Kulkarni), a children’s film Dahavi F (Dir: Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukthankar), and Vastupurush which received the National award for Best Marathi Film in 2003.

He is also a visiting faculty at the Social Communications Media course at Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai where he teaches and has helped the students with his editing expertise in their filmmaking projects.

Mahesh Aney - Cinematographer

In 1974, he chanced upon Herzog’s Aguirre : The Wrath of God and became a convert. He had planned to pursue a management degree. He joined film school instead.

Today, Mahesh Aney is a National Film Award winning cinematographer. An FTII Pune graduate with specialization in cinematography he has shot for more than a thousand commercials with leading directors like Prahlad Kakkar, Mukul Anand, Ram Madhvani, Prasoon Pandey, Ashutosh Gowarikar and many others. His commercials include award-winning films for Pepsi, Kellogg's, Tata Steel, Feviquik and Maggie among others. He has also cinematographed two international music videos for Deep Forest and Mirage.

Mahesh has also conceptualized and directed extremely popular television shows like Movers & Shakers, Bindaas Bol, Kya Masti Kya Dhoom, Saturday Suspense and Wajood, which have won several awards.

In 2004, he shot Swades, for which he won the National Award for Best Cinematographer.

Currently he is shooting an English film for BAFTA nominated director Suri Krishnamma called Good Sharma.

Amole Gupte - Creative Director

Amole Gupte is the originator, writer and creative director of Taare Zameen Par; a film that stirred the entire world and nation and that enthused a spectacular social change in the parent-child relationship with its message being, ‘every child is special’. He has acted in more than 110 student films of FTII, Pune and now stars in Vishal Bharadwaj’s Kaminey as one of the chief protagonists’. “Chor Bazaar” - His book, amalgamated with his sketches will release with his next film, Sapnon Ko Gintey Gintey, which is in the pre-production stage. He has been the visiting faculty at esteemed film-making & media institutes like FTII, Whistling Woods International and MET.

The Indian Union Budget Live with UTVi

Now you can watch the Indian Union Budget live with UTVi at http://budget.nautanki.tv/

If you are a Facebook user you can post your comments and share it with your friends.

And for the first time we allowed the live stream feed to be taken by any blog or website you want by just copying the embed code give below the live stream player on the webpage:

We had formidable names join in : Financial Express, Mid-day.com, UTVi.com, etaxindia.com and over 500+ blogs. The results were as follows:

* Total views – 1.2 million across widgets, embeds and main page
* Peak streams – 4,400 streams/sec
* Avg. content viewing – 18 mins/user


Nautanki.tv enables you to add value to your user by providing easy methods to make video content available for your use. We hope that this initiative of ours ensures that the Budget 09 presented by the Finance Minister of India is debated and discussed and a strong message goes out to the government that the Internet user in India does care for his country.

Team Nautanki.tv

Indyarocks.com partners with nautanki.tv, Offers free online access to 16 premium video channels

Top Indian Entertainment based social network – Indyarocks.com has announced the launch of 16 Free premium video Channels in partnership with Online Video distribution platform nautanki.tv

This partnership will offer 3 million users of Indyarocks free online access to premium video content from Youth Channels (MTV, Channel[v], FTV), News Channels (Times Now, Zee News), General Entertainment channels (Colors, Star), Movie Based channels (Zoom, Eros, Bollywood Hungama, Lehren) and a Bhangra channel.

Kalyan Manyam, co-founder, Indyarocks.com said, “Our Partnership with nautanki.tv will enable us to further strengthen our leadership in entertainment based social networking. Efforts are in place to increase the number of online video channels to 25 by Dec 2009.”

“We are excited with the partnership with Indyarocks.com. Indyarocks.com has a done a great job of implementing the nautanki.tv api suite to provide premium video content to its users. We hope that the users of Indyarocks.com have a great time watching premium video content from nautanki.tv’s content partners.” Says Sunil Nair, CEO nautanki.tv

Indyarocks.com is a free to use service. The premium video channels can be accessed at http://videos.indyarocks.com . People can also register at www.indyarocks.com for free and enjoy any or all of the following services: 360 degree Bollywood content, 12500 free games, cricket, customizable profiles, free SMS interactivity, SMS based Calendar, SMS based Status updates, Integrated Media Center with capability to upload and share unlimited Photos, Videos, Blogs and much more.

About Indyarocks

Indyarocks is a niche social networking platform. Launched in June 2007, it already serves the entertainment and communication needs of over 3 million Indians across the globe.

About Nautanki.tv

Launched in November 2006, Nautanki.tv offers TV channels, content producers and film makers a way to bring their shows, movies and clips to Nautanki.tv and other online destination sites via a network of over 13000 widgets placed on its partner websites. Nautanki.tv widgets and api’s are used on Facebook, and many other destinations as well as a growing network of personal blogs, fan sites, and other Web sites where users choose to embed the Nautanki.tv widget. Currently, Nautanki.tv webcasts over 38 million original videos to over 6.5 million viewers daily.

Hungama, South Asia’s largest mobile & digital entertainment content company, recently acquired a controlling stake in Nautanki.tv.

Kudos to the Tech Team!

The Zee Facebook project wouldn't have been a success if it weren't for the Tech Team who worked like sages on a mission. And kudos to them for pulling it off brilliantly!

Deepak from the Tech team here shows us just how many hours of sleep the tech team got per day till this project finally took off!

Election Results | Live on Facebook | Powered by Nautanki.tv

We at Nautanki have been experimenting with a few things, and one of the biggest associations and experiments that we’ve had on the drawing board for a few months is going to take off tomorrow. We’ve partnered with the biggest social networking site in the world – none other than Facebook – along with one of India’s leading Hindi news channels – Zee News – to bring a LIVE webcast of the election results, from May 16 to 18.

What’s unique? It’s only the first time in India that election results are going to be streamed live on the internet. And what’s more – it’s interactive. People will be able to leave their comments and discuss while watching the stream, real-time. Try it out yourself – the link is http://elections.nautanki.tv/ and the Facebook page for this event is here.

Already there’s been quite a buzz created about this. Times of India, Asian Age have written about this, so have aFaqs. Other websites on which this news is present: CIOL, WatPR, Pluggd, WATBlog.com, Alootechie.com, ITMAGZ and TelevisionPoint. Infact, we were the first Indian corporate to tie up with Facebook. But don’t take our word for it, ask Mid-Day!

There are going to be no advertisements during the telecast. This is a purely brand-building exercise. Facebook is trying to penetrate deeper into the Indian market to oust the incumbent, Orkut. And reaching out to a target audience in a language they are comfortable with is the strategy. And Nautanki, who has an association with Zee, is providing them the perfect platform to do so. For Zee, it’s a step to reach out to more people in the online space. For Nautanki, it’s a promotional event to show the world the possibilities that it can offer through video advertising on a network extending to close to 13000 websites, and a daily viewership of 38 million, around the world.

Let us know what you think. This is just one of many plans that Nautanki has in the pipeline. An online short-film festival and India’s first online rock music fest are on the cards for later this year.

After all, we’re more than just a video content network – we are everywhere!!!

Webtalkies '09

Create your own language. Extend the boundary. Take a leap. And reach out to the largest audience you could dream of via webtalkies ’09, an online film festival hosted by nautanki.tv.

Webtalkies invites films, both fiction and non-fiction, across genres and languages. The only constraint would be in terms of the film duration which will have to be between min 3 to max 15 minutes. The shortlisted films will be screened on nautanki.tv and simultaneously judged by our panel of judges including filmmakers like Paromita Vohra and Amol Gupte, film editors like Deepa Bhatia and cinematographers like Mahesh Aney.

The best three films will be chosen by the jury as per the following categories and will be awarded prize monies as follows:
• Best Short Film : Rs 50,000
• Best Editor : Rs 25,000
• Best Cinematographer : Rs 25,000
In addition, the film that gets the highest number of views on nautanki.tv will be awarded the
• Audience Choice Award and a cash prize of Rs. 30,000.


CONTENT SPECIFICATIONS:

The film will have to be based on an original story. It can be either fiction or non-fiction.

The year of production of the film should be between 2006 - 2009. We will not accept films made prior to 2006.

Films in all languages are welcome. However, non-english films will have to be subtitled in English.

You can use any kind of camera to make the film – right from a mobile phone to a high end camera.

There is no restriction on the number of movies you submit to the festival, but each movie will be considered as a separate entry and has to be submitted with separate submission forms.

Your movie should not have been released or published anywhere on the theatrical, television or online space prior to the festival.

Films with pornographic material will be rejected and queries not entertained.

Please ensure that you have the rights to all material (video, audio, music, songs, photographs, etc) used in your film or that it is royalty free. In case of copyright issues Nautanki.tv shall not be liable and the film shall be out rightly rejected without any explanation thereof.

The copyrights of the film will lie with the filmmaker.

The distribution rights of all the films submitted will lie with Nautanki.tv. After the festival the filmmaker can distribute the films on other mediums.

The film will have to be between 3 to 15 minutes inclusive of the credit titles.

The submission form attached along with this mail will have to be filled in by the filmmaker and sent along with the dvd. We will not accept Entries with incomplete forms. Please ensure that all details are provided.

The film along with the submission form have to be sent to :
Nautanki.tv Networks Private Limited, 24, Aaram Nagar Part 2, J P Road, Versova, Andheri West, Mumbai 400061.

PROCESS:

1. Entries open 1st June, 09 to 15th July, 09. No entries will be accepted after 15th July.

2. There is no entry fee.

3. Film format - *.avi

4. Video formats accepted:
(i) NTSC (720 x 480 pixels)
(ii) PAL (720 x 576 pixels )
(iii) SECAM (768 x 576 pixels)

5. Please burn your film as a data file on a DVD. The DVD should be marked with the name of the film, filmmaker, duration, email id & phone no.

6. The shortlisted films will be notified by mail on 1st August, 09 and the films will be put up on www.nautanki.tv

7. The rejected films will be notified by mail.

8. The best three films selected by our esteemed jury members will be declared on 7th September, 09.

9. The winning films will be screened at INOX, Nariman Point on the 27th of September 09 and the jury will present the cash prizes.

10. Any changes in dates will be notified.

About Nautanki.tv

Nautanki.tv is an online broadcast platform based in Bombay and has the largest viewership of Entertainment content in South Asia. We have over 30 million videos viewed everyday through our network of widgets placed across 11,000 plus publishers. We work with some of the biggest names in the television industry and have a bouquet of television channels like Star Plus, Colors, MTV, Channel V, Times Now, Zoom, ITN UK and Zee News to name a few.

Nautanki.tv owns an online channel called 'Mirch Masala' which showcases short films and documentaries. It provides opportunity and a platform to filmmakers across the world to screen their films and generate revenue on them. The film festival will run on Mirch Masala.

For any further queries please write in to Priyanka Bhuyan at webtalkies@nautanki.tv or call on (022)26323338

video weekends 1

Lehren on Nautanki.tv

Lehren, India's first 24x7 showbiz news and entertainment channel, has entered into an agreement to have their content on Nautanki.tv.

Lehren is the only news channel in India whose mandate is exclusive to Indian showbiz while spanning the entire spectrum of activities within it. It is the definitive source of news and information on Bollywood and bills itself as THE Bollywood channel. Its engagement with Bollywood dates back to 1987, to the pre-satellite era, when it pioneered film-based entertainment shows for India's then emerging television industry. To this day Lehren enjoys great brand recall within the film industry and among Bollywood fans world over.

Before their foray into television, Lehren decided to go the unconventional way and launch their channel on the world wide web. “We decided to partner with Nautanki.tv as it is a superior platform vis-a-vis the other players. It also has a number of reputed channels and great viewership. We also found its concept of distribution – via over 10000 widgets across blogs and websites very interesting,” said Deepali Narsiker, Head of Broadband Services at Lehren Entertainment Pvt Ltd.

Lehren will go live on nautanki.tv on 3 April 2009 with their vast repertoire of content which includes mainly Bollywood - film first looks, movie premieres, celebrity chats, interviews, movie reviews and previews, music launches, music releases, making of and behind the scenes. Apart from Bollywood there will also be Hollywood and Regional content.

Lehren hopes to aid the globalization of Bollywood and in so doing become a global player itself and this is just the first step.

Nautanki.tv recently went global with ITN, UK and also partnered with Viacom 18 for their MTV India and Colors channels and with Broadcast Initiative for Mi Marathi and Live India news channel. With these tie-ups most of the major television broadcasters in India are now part of the Nautanki.tv Platform.