9.9 Mediaworx takes over School of Convergence

Televisionpoint.com Correspondent | New Delhi
9.9 Mediaworx, promoted by Pramath Raj Sinha, has taken over School of Convergence from Kaleidoscope Entertainment, headed by Bobby Bedi. The institute is being rebranded as 9.9 School of Convergence (9.9 SoC).

Pramath Raj Sinha, founder and managing director, 9.9 Mediaworx and founding dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB), will be Dean of 9.9 SoC. The institute is starting its first batch in September with just one course, an eleven-month diploma in Applied Journalism.

Be it the course, infrastructure or the faculty, everything is being redesigned for the new 9.9 SoC. The media school was shut down two years back, due to inadequate funding.

Pramath Raj Sinha, says, "I believe that irrespective of the medium, every media person must have an art of telling a good story. We in media find a dearth of high quality talent and all of us are struggling to find people who can write good stories and efficiently cover events and various issues."

"Ultimately, I want to develop a truly world class media school in India. Therefore, we decided to put together something that is worthwhile and matches the global standards. We are just retaining the name of the school; everything else will be new here." Sinha says.

The school has an impressive list of faculty members, including Graham Watts, a journalist and trainer; BV Rao, consulting editor with MoneyLife, a fortnightly magazine, and a columnist on Indian media; Rasheeda Bhagat, associate editor of Hindu Business Line; Edward Henning, a teacher-turned-journalist; Vanita Kohli-Khandekar, independent media consultant and writer.

Other faculty members are Savyasaachi Jain, Mala Bhargava, Jacob Cherian, Radha Hegde, Vinay Kamat, Pooja Kothari, Ranbir Majumdar, Eric Saranovitz and Pramath Raj Sinha himself.

Apart from acquiring 9.9 SoC, Mediaworx recently took over iGovernment.in, a government focused online portal. With this initiative, the company has entered the government vertical, targeting the advertising and promotions budgets of companies focused on e-governance.

Early this year, the company had announced plans of launching Inc. magazine in India by June. However, the launch got delayed, as Sinha says, "We have received the approval from Information and Broadcasting Ministry only in June, and within two months, the print version of the magazine will be launched."