Zendesk Offers Instagram Messaging for Businesses Across India

Zendesk, Inc. today announced the addition of Instagram messaging to its customer support offering. This means businesses can now provide customer service on Instagram from directly within Zendesk. As a leader in messaging for customer service, this aligns with the company’s continued investment in new social messaging channels and a new, modern workspace for businesses to connect, engage and transact with customers.

The Messenger API for Instagram offers support for businesses to efficiently manage customer service inquiries that come over Instagram messaging. With this API, companies can have rich, seamless conversations with customers who respond to stories, start DMs, and more. For example:

· A retail company that receives a direct message from a customer about the status of their order can reply to the customer quickly with accurate information about the shipment directly from Zendesk.

· A customer who is scrolling through Instagram and watches a brand’s Story promoting a holiday sale can immediately message them for more information. The customer could then receive a personalized response from an agent, whether it be a promo code, website link or shipping information that will remain in the conversation history for when a purchase is made. This eliminates the need to switch to another support channel such as phone or email.

Zendesk makes it even easier for businesses to get up and running on Instagram quickly by integrating this API directly into the Zendesk platform. At launch*, customers will be able to access these capabilities from right inside the agent workspace, and also be able to turn on Instagram for other software built with Zendesk.

From February to August of this year, customer service inquiries through channels such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter DMs, and SMS rose nearly 50 percent. Also, according to Zendesk’s yearly Benchmark report, messaging apps have the highest customer satisfaction rating of any channel, with a CSAT of 98%. With over one billion active monthly users, Instagram is an important channel for businesses to add to the mix.

“At Zendesk, we work to make it easy for brands to communicate with customers across any channel, and social media is quickly becoming the preference. All social messaging conversations can easily flow into one place inside Zendesk,” said Mike Gozzo, VP of Product, Zendesk. “With its tremendous popularity, Instagram is a key addition so businesses can serve customers who reach out on Instagram in a more timely, consistent and personal manner.”

“We are thrilled Zendesk is launching support for Instagram messaging. Businesses and people are messaging with each other more than ever, and Instagram is a critical platform to connect with customers and build relationships,” said Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, VP of Platform Partnerships at Messenger. “Messenger API support for Instagram means businesses and developers can now manage their customer communications on Instagram at scale.”

*This capability is currently available to a limited number of customers in early access, more details on broader availability to come in 2021.

To learn more about Zendesk and Sunshine Conversations visit zendesk.com/conversations.

About Zendesk

Zendesk is a service-first CRM company that builds support, sales, and customer engagement software designed to foster better customer relationships. From large enterprises to startups, we believe that powerful, innovative customer experiences should be within reach for every company, no matter the size, industry or ambition. Zendesk serves more than 160,000 customers across a multitude of industries in over 30 languages. Zendesk is headquartered in San Francisco, and operates offices worldwide.

Infogain Recognized as ‘Major Contender’ in Everest Group’s Digital Interactive Experience (IX) Services PEAK Matrix Assessment 2020

Infogain, a Silicon Valley based digital platform and software engineering company, today announced that it has been recognized as a ‘Major Contender’ in Everest Group’s Digital Interactive Experience (IX) Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2020.

Everest Group’s PEAK Matrix® is a proprietary framework for assessing market capability, impact, and vision.  The Digital Interactive Experience (IX) Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2020 categorizes 18 Digital Interactive service providers as Leaders, Major Contenders, or Aspirants. The assessment is based on Everest Group’s interactions with leading Interactive Experience (IX) service providers, proprietary database of participants, client reference checks, and an analysis of the digital IX market.

Vikas Kamran, EVP - Infogain and CEO - Revel Consulting said, “With customer acquisition costs on the rise, most business leaders believe their companies need to provide authentic experiences that build trust, instill loyalty, and grow customer lifetime value. Infogain’s experience-led approach blends human-centered design with software engineering to understand, reframe and unlock latent value. We’re passionate about improving customer and employee delight through personalized digital experiences that feel valuable, not intrusive.”

Ayan Mukerji, President and Chief Operating Officer, Infogain, said, “Digital Interactive Experience (IX) is an important part of Infogain’s Value Delivery Framework, where we identify B2B and B2C digital strategies and unlock new potential by delivering touchless and frictionless experience. We adopt a cloud-first digital platform approach to drive competitive advantage in the network economy.” 

“Digital Interactive Experience (IX) services are helping enterprises differentiate in the experience economy and unlock more value for their customers, employees, and partners. The new experience ecosystem, accelerated by the ongoing pandemic, is characterized by digital-first, touchless operations, coupled with increased consumption of at-home experiences,” said Nitish Mittal, Vice President, Everest Group. “Infogain has made notable strides in digital IX services by establishing a credible set of offerings in marketing, digital experience, and commerce.”

Everest Group is a consulting and research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, and engineering services. For more information on the report, click here.

About Infogain

Infogain is a Silicon Valley headquartered company with digital platform and software engineering expertise in the travel, retail, insurance, healthcare, and high technology industries. We accelerate design-led transformation and delivery of digital customer engagement systems and platforms. Infogain engineers business outcomes for Fortune 500 companies and digital natives using technologies such as cloud, microservices, robotic process automation, IoT, and artificial intelligence.

A ChrysCapital portfolio company, Infogain has offices in California, Washington, Texas, London, Dubai, India, and Singapore, with delivery centers in Austin, Kraków, New Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, and Mumbai.

Odias in ML Global Conference 2020 Discussed How to Leverage AI/ML for Overall Socio-Economic Development

Odisha can chart out a data-driven strategy to propel the next phase of its growth leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning, agreed participants in a global virtual conference, Odias in ML, organized by a group of Odias, also called Odias in ML, with a shared interest in AI and M recently. The first-of-its-kind conference saw participation of a multitude of stakeholders including researchers, IT professionals, data scientists, academicians, linguists, administrators, entrepreneurs, business executives, media persons, and community leaders. 

The conference comprised four sessions, themed AI for Odisha, AI for Odia language, Research & Career Opportunities in AI; and Entrepreneurship and Business Opportunities in AI. Each session was a combination of keynotes, presentations and panel discussions.

Speaking in the session, research and career opportunities in AI/ML for Odisha, Prof Prasant Mohapatra, Vice Chancellor of Research, University of California Davis, identified two specific areas – agriculture and healthcare – where leveraging data and application of AI/ML could help Odisha significantly.  Prof Panchanan Mohanty, noted linguist and President of Linguistic Society of India, outlined areas which natural language processing (NLP) technologies could address. The community agreed to work towards forming teams for developing fundamental lexicographic tools needed for NLP in Odisha. Dr Pragyasmita Nayak, Chief Data Scientist at Hitachi, outlined how Odisha could leverage data for its development and administration. Manoj Mishra, Secretary, Electronics & IT outlined areas (including in COVID management) where Odisha is currently using analytics, and expressed his desire to work closely with Odia techies and data scientists across the world for betterment of Odisha. Prof Chitta Baral, Professor of Computer Science at University of Arizona, talked about his research in the area of natural language processing.

Various speakers and panellists also suggested that Odias across the world should consistently collaborate with each other in this area to create opportunities for Odisha and Odias. Many speakers stressed the need to create a conducive environment for entrepreneurship in Odisha. Many also agreed on the need to impart AI/ML and data science education across universities and institutes in Odisha.

“The response to the conference was beyond all our expectations. We immensely thank the Odia community for their overwhelming support and encouragement. We will continuously work to strengthen the Odias in ML community and will work closely with government, educational institutions and various external stakeholders like technology companies and institutions to continuously further the cause,” said Anjan Kumar Panda, Convenor, Odias in ML. 

The inaugural session on AI for Odisha saw participation of Manoj Mishra, Secretary Electronics & IT; Dr Pragyasmita Nayak, Chief Data Scientist, Hitachi; Kirti Sundar Sahoo, researcher at University of Waterloo, Canada; and Kuku Das, President, Odisha Society of Americas. The session was moderated by technology editor Shyamanuja Das.

The session on AI for Odia language has participation from Prof Panchanan Mohanty, noted linguist; Tushar Pattnaik, Joint Director C-DAC; Vivekananda Pani, CTO, Reverie Language Technologies; Subharadashi Panda and Soumendra Sahoo, architects of Odia-English translation bot MTE2O. The session also had a discussion featuring Prof Sanghamitra Mohanty, ex HoD computer science Utkal University & ex Vice-Chancellor of North Odisha University; Dr Shantpriya Parida,  post-doctoral researcher at Idiap Research Institute;  Soumendra Sahoo, architect and Kumarika Mohanty, leader of community at MTE2O, an English-Odia language translation bot, with Subhashis Panigrahi, independent researcher moderating the discussion. The entire session was moderated by Anjan Panda, the convenor of the Odias in ML conference.

The session on Research & Career Opportunities in AI/ML had speakers like Prof  Prasant Mohapatra of University of California Berkley; Prof Chitta Baral of School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering at Arizona State University; Sudeept Maharana, VP Engineering Priceline & Country Head, Priceline India; and Pradeepta Mishra, Head of AI - Leni at LTI. Abhijeet, Parida, Data Scientist at Deepc.ai;  Jyotirmay Senapati, Assistant Research Scientist, Artificial Intelligence in Medical Imaging; Subhadarshi Panda, PhD scholar in Computer Science at the Graduate Center City University of New York and Satwik Panigrahi, student at Dougherty Valley High School San Ramon, CA, USA shared their research experience. The session was moderated by Damodar Sahu, Head of Global Strategic Alliances, New Age & SaaS Applications, and Wipro.

The final session on Entrepreneurship & Business Opportunities in AI included talks by Sitikantha Panigrahi, Managing Director, Software Research at Mizuho Americas; Chidananda Khatua, noted technologist and CEO of Equbot; Ayaashkanta Mohanty, Managing Director, Tatwa technologies; Dhirendra Kar, President, Business Intelligence Professionals and Dr Sanjay Raut, CEO of Innovation Solution Lab. Sitikantha Panigrahi also moderated the session.  

The conference ended on a high note with participants across the world pledging to work together in various areas of AI/ML application that could benefit Odisha, Odia language and Odia people.

Odias in ML has also received a lot of suggestions from stakeholders post the conference. The group is compiling those suggestions to create a definite plan of action, which will be released soon.

About Odias in ML

Odias in ML is an umbrella organization for Odias in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning, Data Science. This is an organization of volunteers from the Odia community participating in various capacities in the field of machine learning.  Applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning for growth and prosperity of Odisha and Odia language by creating an ecosystem for Odisha and Odias across the globe. A group of interdependent, complementary skilled collaborating volunteer Odias globally is a platform on while Odias in ML is nurturing the next generation of researchers, entrepreneurs will build the next generation solutions for Odisha and Odia.

10 Startups Selected for Accenture’s 2020 FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific

Ten leading fintech companies have been selected for the seventh annual FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific, a mentorship program created by Accenture (NYSE: ACN) that helps startups fine-tune their business plans and solutions by pairing them with mentors from leading financial institutions.

This year’s program received applications from 162 companies across more than 30 countries, with solutions related to the five themes for the 2020 program: data & analytics; digital bank solutions; emerging technologies; health insurance ecosystem; and intelligent automation.

Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), advanced analytics, natural language processing and other technologies, the 10 selected startups — which hail from seven markets, including India — have developed innovations designed to help financial institutions address a variety of challenges, including keeping up with compliance requirements, analyzing large volumes of structured and unstructured data, and building more-personalized customer products and services.

The Lab will partner startups with senior executives from the participating financial institutions, as well as with technology entrepreneurs and industry experts. The mentors will work with the companies to further develop their solutions and business strategies through a series of virtual meetings, user-group sessions, workshops and networking opportunities, helping them connect with potential customers at top institutions.

“The quantity and high caliber of this year’s applicants have resulted in an extremely strong class for the 2020 program, and the pandemic has not stopped the demand for more innovation in financial services,” said Ravinder Chhabra, a managing director at Accenture and the executive sponsor of the FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific program in Hong Kong. “In fact, we’re seeing more firms accelerate their digital transformation journeys, and investors are increasingly looking at fintech solutions to help banks, insurers and payments firms improve how they operate and serve customers. We remain committed to nurturing a healthy forum for startups and financial institutions to learn from each other and continue to innovate.”

Sonali Kulkarni, Lead – Financial Services, Accenture in India said, “We are seeing some fantastic innovation coming out of India’s fintech ecosystem, be it for digital payments, credit and risk management, underwriting or security. As per an Accenture analysis of data from CB Insights – a global venture-finance data and analytics firm, released in February 2020, fintech investments in India nearly doubled, to US$3.7 billion in 2019, making the country the world’s third largest fintech market.”

The FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific is a collaboration between Accenture and leading financial institutions, which this year include AIA International Limited; Bank of America; BlackRock; China Construction Bank (Asia); Credit Suisse; Dah Sing Bank; Generali; Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Asia) Limited; J.P. Morgan; Macquarie Group; Maybank; Morgan Stanley; Natixis; Saxo Markets; Société Générale; SC Ventures by Standard Chartered; Sun Life; ZA International; and Zurich Insurance Company Ltd.

The 2020 Lab formally kicks off in October and culminates in December, when the participants will present their solutions at a virtual Demo Day to an audience of venture capitalists and financial industry executives.

The 2020 FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific participants are: 

Knight FinTech (India) – A Singapore- and India-based fintech, Knight FinTech provides an AI-powered, SaaS-based treasury management and credit assessment platform to help financial firms increase returns and decrease risk. Its interest rate and credit risk models analyze millions of data points to provide actionable insights to treasury managers or dealers taking a position on yield curve or taking a corporate credit risk exposure.   

Fedo (India) – Fedo’s algorithm quantifies an individual’s risk for various diseases and his/her propensity to file a claim over the next few years, based on a photograph, enabling insurers to onboard and underwrite customers digitally with little to no manual intervention. The solution has helped Fedo’s retail health insurance clients reduce underwriting costs by 50% and turnaround times by more than 70%.

Fano Labs (Hong Kong) – Specializing in speech recognition and natural language processing technologies across a wide variety of languages and dialects, Fano Labs helps enterprises with customer service, compliance and other lines of business, enabling them to accurately identify potential compliance risks, reduce costs, and uncover potential sales opportunities.

KADA (Australia) – KADA’s AI-based platform, known as K, enables financial institutions to scale data knowledge across the organization. By analyzing millions of event logs, K helps companies identify hidden context of data, understand how its people use data, and create networks between data stored in data warehouses, data lakes and analytical tools — giving people the knowledge they need to deliver faster and better data outcomes.

Flybits (Canada) – Flybits is a leading customer experience platform for the financial services sector, delivering personalization at scale. With an extensive collection of customizable modules that preserve consumer privacy, Flybits enables banks to increase speed to market, and maximize return on investment through its digital channels. Flybits enables financial institutions to elevate their mobile apps, creating a ‘human-touch’ experience and advancing the customer experience beyond transactions.

SPIN Analytics (United Kingdom) – SPIN Analytics helps tier-one and digital banks improve credit risk management with its explainable AI-based platform, RISKROBOT™. The platform provides 10x acceleration of model development, validation, documentation and deployment, which reduces maintenance time by at least 90% and total costs by 70%. Encoding 28 years of credit risk-modeling experience into AI and insights, the platform helps banks make decisions and control assumptions. The solution covers all types of credit risk models for regulatory, risk management, and business purposes.

Capitalise.ai (Israel) – An Israeli-based startup offering non-technical traders the ability to automate their trades, using free-style text with no coding needed. Capitalise.ai’s trading platform turns text into complex algorithmic trading strategies, using natural language processing technology. Capitalise.ai’s platform is already being used by leading brokers around the globe, amplifying their performance by offering their traders a unique trading experience.

UVAS (Singapore) – UVAS (by Atlant.io) is a securities exchange offering primary issuance of shares and debentures, secondary trading and optimized post-trade process, with automatic clearing, settlement and custody, all at 90-95% cost savings compared to other exchanges. UVAS strives to remedy the situation of illiquidity and opaqueness in capital markets and serves as a turnkey solution for the alternative asset space.

Symbo (Singapore) – Symbo uses its proprietary digital insurance platforms to digitize insurance distribution in partnership with insurance companies. Its award-winning mobile app helps insurers digitally engage with intermediaries, tied agents and financial advisors by simplifying insurance transactions.

Staple (Singapore) – Staple’s cognitive AI-based solution helps reduce the costs of back-office operations, such as compliance and onboarding checks. By combining computer vision, natural language processing, optical character recognition and machine learning, the solution can read, interpret and extract data from documents at scale, regardless of layout, format or language.

Launched in Hong Kong in June 2014, the FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific has received more than 1,000 applications since its inception, and the program’s 49 alumni companies have raised US$525 million and created more than 1,500 jobs after participating in the program.

The FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific is modeled on similar programs that Accenture co-founded in New York and London in 2010 and 2012, respectively. Globally, the Labs’ alumni companies have raised, in total, approximately US$2 billion in venture financing after participating in the program

About Accenture

Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries, we offer Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and Operations services—all powered by the world’s largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. Our 506,000 people deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity every day, serving clients in more than 120 countries. We embrace the power of change to create value and shared success for our clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities.

Brilloca Bathware Brand from Hindware Appoints Sudhanshu Pokhriyal as COO for Bath Prodcuts Business

Aiming to accelerate growth in the rapidly evolving business landscape, Brilloca Limited, the makers of pioneering bathware brand  Hindware, strengthened its leadership team with the appointment of Sudhanshu Pokhriyal as the Chief Operating Officer of the Bath Products Business.

In his role, Sudhanshu will be responsible for driving new growth opportunities in the bathware business and will oversee key business functions, such as Sales & Marketing, Services, Commercial Sales, Business Development and Product Management among others. He will report to Mr. Sanjay Kalra, CEO of Bath Products & Tiles.

Mr. Sandip Somany, Chairman and Managing Director, Brilloca Limited said, “I am excited to welcome Sudhanshu on board. He brings in the desired expertise to this new role given his prior experience with consumer and retail sectors. He has an impressive track record of driving growth for leading companies and he is the right fit for Brilloca.”

A dynamic professional with over two decades of experience, Sudhanshu has worked across organizations in various leadership capacities, including Asian Paints, Coco Cola and SC Johnson.

Mr. Sanjay Kalra, CEO, Bath Products and Tiles, Brilloca Limited said, “As we aggressively move forward to pursue new growth opportunities amidst a challenging global scenario, we are happy to have Sudhanshu on board at Brilloca. He brings in rich experience of leading business divisions at several key organisations across diverse industries. I am confident that he will add great value to our efforts as we continue to strengthen Brilloca as one of India’s leading bathware solutions entity.”

About Brilloca: Brilloca, makers of the iconic brand ‘Hindware’, is a leading Building Products company in the country. Brilloca has a versatile range of best-in-class bathware products that caters to a wide cross-section of the customers with a strong portfolio of leading innovative brands across the value chain such as Queo - the luxury brand, Alchymi - the super-premium brand, Hindware Italian Collection and Hindware - the premium brands and H-Vitreous and Benelave - the mass segment brands.

Brilloca also houses ‘TRUFLO by Hindware’, plastic pipes and fittings business that comprises PVC, CPVC, UPVC and SWR pipes catering to the building segment. The company recently forayed into the premium and super-premium tiles business with brand ‘Neom- Neo modern Tiles by Hindware’.

Tata Motors Launches ‘Grahak Samvaad 2020’ to Enhance Customer Experience

Key Highlights:

* Grahak Samvaad scheduled from 23rd to 31st October 2020 to inform customers on various initiatives launched by Tata Motors

* Nationwide service check-up campaign across 1500+ dealers and Tata authorised service stations from 1st to 30th November 2020 for its customers through the Grahak Seva Mahotsav

* Celebrating ‘National Customer Care Day’ on 23rd October 2020 to reward and recognise its customers for their association with Tata Motors

Strengthening its commitment to enhance the customer experience and to offer world-class products, Tata Motors, India’s largest commercial vehicle manufacturer, has announced the Grahak Samvaad 2020 from 23rd to 31st October 2020. Tata Motors will also be rolling out a nationwide service campaign, the Grahak Seva Mahotsav from 1st November until 30th November 2020 and will be celebrating the National Customer Care Day on 23rd October 2020. Popular amongst the customers and channel partners, these initiatives include customer feedback sessions, felicitation of channel partners and nationwide check-up camp of all Tata Motor’s commercial vehicles. Over the years, the Tata Motors have witnessed thousands of customers visiting daily and benefiting from this program.

This year, Tata Motors is focusing to provide its commercial vehicle customers with a hassle-free service experience during the pandemic. The company is consistently striving to the best of its capabilities to engage with customers and fleet operators to provide them with the best-in-class service experience.

Grahak Samvaad campaign is a customer engagement program scheduled from 23rd to 31st October 2020. The program educates the customers about the company’s innovative offerings launched in 2020 such as uptime guarantee with its AMC packages and TAT guarantee (turnaround time) along with the latest launch of upgraded BS6 range of vehicles. Tata Motors also uses this platform to collect feedback from its customers and understand their expectations from the company. The valuable customer feedback is later utilised to improve the products and solutions offered to customers for better fleet utilisation. Tata Motors celebrates the National Customer Care Day on 23rd October to commemorate the sale of Tata Motors 1st truck, rolled out from its Jamshedpur plant in 1954 on the same day. Associated channel partners, staff and customers are felicitated and recognised by the company for their long association and contribution to Tata Motors’ success. Grahak Seva Mahotsav is a service camp held scheduled from 1st November to 30th November 2020 at over 1500+ dealers and Tata authorized service stations in India for its commercial vehicle owners. The service camp will provide the Tata Motors customers with comprehensive vehicle check-up. In 2019, the Grahak Seva Mahotsav received an overwhelming response with over 1,60,000 customers visiting the camp.

Commenting on the occasion, Mr. R Ramakrishnan, Global Head – Customer Care, Commercial Vehicle Business Unit, Tata Motors, said, “In the wake of Covid-19 pandemic, the Indian trucking industry has emerged as the custodians of the country’s supply chain. As a market leader in commercial vehicles, Tata Motors undertook a responsibility to ensure the wellbeing of the entire trucking community, through several initiatives throughout the pandemic. To further this objective, this edition of the customer dialogue program and service camp is set to cater to the changing times and fast-evolving demand of the consumers. As a customer-centric company, we are always at the forefront of listening to the customers’ needs and offer the best solutions. The success of the Grahak Samvaad over the years has not only ensured that we deliver the best customer service, contentment and freedom to the owners and drivers, but also develop world-class products for the market. Sampoorna Seva 2.0 expands our efforts to provide a unique customer experience and convenience.”

The Sampoorna Seva 2.0 is an umbrella of services that offer the commercial vehicle customer “peace of mind”. Included in the Sampoorna Seva 2.0 package are (a) Breakdown Assistance with assured reach and resolution time anywhere in the country (except troubled areas) (b) Guaranteed Turnaround time at authorised workshops for service and repair during the warranty period (c) Restoration of vehicle after collision within an assured time period (d) Annual Maintenance Contracts (e) Long warranty period (f) Genuine Spare Parts (g) Remanufactured engines, clutches etc.

Discovery Plus Premieres Sports Docuseries “Matchday – Inside FC Barcelona” an Exclusive 8-Episode Special with FC Barcelona

Discovery Plus, India’s first aggregated real-life entertainment streaming app, is launching an 8 episodic docuseries “Matchday – Inside FC Barcelona” through which viewers can enjoy exclusive never-seen-before footage of FC Barcelona squad during the 2018/19 season. For the first time in India, football fans can witness the everyday lives of players such as Leo Messi, Philippe Coutinho, Gerard Piqué and Marc-André ter Stegen among others, offering an intimate portrait of them both during competition and in their personal lives.

The Matchday series produced by Barça Studios -the hub for creation, production and commercialisation of FC Barcelona’s audio-visual content products- with the collaboration of Rakuten, is streaming on Discovery Plus starting October 12, and is narrated by Academy Award Nominee John Malkovich. The series captures the excitement and thrill of following one of the most loved clubs in the world and brings to the fore numerous touching stories of the team and its superstars from the pivotal 2018/2019 season.

Each chapter of Matchday will focus on a crucial game of the 2018/19 season, which becomes the common background for a number of stories about protagonists from the club that players, managers, staff etc. Each episode will allow viewers to experience ‘from inside’ how players faced all those important matches, from their arrival to the dressing room to their stepping out onto the pitch. Matchday also presents fly-on-the-wall footage of the highs of victory and how the players deal with defeats.

Dídac Lee, Board Member responsible for the Digital Area at FC Barcelona said, “We are very proud to release Matchday in India.  A lot of passion has gone into this project, in which TV cameras were given unprecedented access to the everyday lives of the first team players, both on and off the pitch, showing Barça as never seen before. The narrative structure is completely different to other sports docuseries, it’s much more about telling stories around the players and showing they have lives, kids, interests and feelings. He also added, “Matchday is also a clear example of FC Barcelona’s strategy to evolve into a Global Entertainment Brand, at the crossing point between entertainment and sport, and leading the way in terms of sportainment. Our ambition is to create entertainment-focused content, with the goal of connecting to new audiences worldwide, and spreading the Club’s values and philosophy to fans around the world”.

Juliano Belletti, FC Barcelona Ambassador and the man who scored the winning goal in Paris on 17 May 2006 to earn Barça its second Champions League trophy said, “I am delighted to know that the inside story of FC Barcelona is reaching our huge fan base in India. ‘Matchday’ offers a unique view of moments and situations that the public does not usually get to see. It shows how the best footballers in the world deal with each of these situations, both happy and bitter times, through such values as effort, respect and teamwork. For me, the blaugrana colours are synonymous with a very special stage in my career and I especially appreciate the fact that this docuseries truly shows what it means to be a part of the Barca family. I am sure ‘Matchday’ will take the Club’s fans in India on a very special journey together with the team”.

Speaking on the occasion, Issac John, Digital Head, APAC – Discovery, said, “When it comes to football, FC Barcelona is one of the most revered clubs in the world but more than that as a team FC Barcelona is a pioneering example of ambition, humility, teamwork and respect- all timeless values that extend beyond sport. We are delighted to bring the inside story of such an iconic club that will resonate will cut across demographics and not just the passionate football fans in the country.” He further said, “Our partnership with Rakuten with this special series adds a new dimension of content offering on Discovery Plus and deepens our connection with the passionate sport-loving community.

Discovery Plus will release these eight episodes over the next 8 weeks on Mondays at 6 am and the episodes will also be available in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.