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About

Set up by a team of ver­sa­tile media pro­fes­sion­als, MediaNext is a high-pedigree organ­i­sa­tion that com­bines rich expe­ri­ence with youth­ful dynamism, flair for lan­guage with nitty-gritty of tech­nol­ogy, and con­ven­tional wis­dom with zeal for exploration.

Anand Agashe, Chairman
Before set­ting up MediaNext with like-minded pro­fes­sion­als, he was Director Editor of Sakal Media Group. A bilin­gual (English and Marathi) jour­nal­ist with 30 years of expe­ri­ence, he has risen through the ranks to work in var­i­ous capac­i­ties with sev­eral lead­ing news­pa­pers includ­ing The Times of India, Indian Express, The Independent, Loksatta, Agrowon, Sakal Times, Gomantak, Gomantak Times, Maharashtra Herald, Kesari and Vishal Sahyadri. For about two years, he also headed a spe­cial fea­tures cell of Market Missionaries, a promi­nent adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing agency from Maharashtra, in the 1990s.

At Sakal Media Group, he was a mem­ber of the top man­age­ment and was involved in numer­ous multi-media ini­tia­tives of the com­pany. Having trav­elled exten­sively in India and abroad to par­tic­i­pate in multi-media train­ing work­shops and on study tours, he is con­ver­sant with cur­rent inter­na­tional media trends. He thus com­bines the instincts of a jour­nal­ist with the skills of a manager.

As a mem­ber of World Editors Forum, he has par­tic­i­pated in World Association of Newspapers (WAN) con­fer­ences in Moscow and Cape Town. He has also been a mem­ber of Asia Media Forum and Editors Guild of India. He is a vis­it­ing lec­turer at a num­ber of lead­ing media schools.

Abhay Kulkarni, Managing Director
Equipped with a Masters in Communication and Journalism, he com­mands 20 years of expe­ri­ence in main­stream media. From report­ing to edit­ing and head­ing the fea­tures sec­tion, he has hands-on expe­ri­ence of every sin­gle sub-function in the edi­to­r­ial depart­ment of a media organ­i­sa­tion. Content design, prod­uct devel­op­ment, edi­to­r­ial man­age­ment and devel­op­ing edi­to­r­ial processes are some of his key strengths.

He has under­gone train­ing in: A) 21^st Century jour­nal­ism, organ­ised by Asian Mass Communication Centre; B) Investigative jour­nal­ism, organ­ised by Illinois University; C) Media con­ver­gence, at Newsplex, Columbia.

He is a recip­i­ent of Harry Britten Fellowship awarded by Commonwealth Press Union and the B V Rao Award for Business Journalism. As coor­di­na­tor at the depart­ment of jour­nal­ism in Pune University, he has expe­ri­ence in for­mu­lat­ing con­tent and organ­is­ing courses for journalists.

Sunil Gokhale, Executive Director
Besides a Doctorate in Physics, he has a post-graduate degree in jour­nal­ism. As a result, his pro­fes­sional com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills are com­ple­mented by a strong back­ground in sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy. For 15 years, he worked in the cor­po­rate world (espe­cially in the IT indus­try) with tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion as his domain. Writing user man­u­als and train­ing guides for a wide vari­ety of prod­ucts and ser­vices of domes­tic and over­seas clients con­sti­tuted an inte­gral part of that assignment.

In main­stream media, he has done exten­sive writ­ing dur­ing this period for vir­tu­ally every plat­form ñ print, audio, visual and online. This is why he pos­sesses the rare abil­ity to tune him­self in with the spe­cific require­ments of any client on any media platform.

He com­mands rich expe­ri­ence in design­ing and imple­ment­ing tech­ni­cal writ­ing courses at grad­u­ate and post-graduate lev­els. He also teaches at these courses.

Amit Tekale, Director
An engi­neer­ing grad­u­ate with a post-graduation in com­mu­ni­ca­tion and jour­nal­ism, he has seven years of media expe­ri­ence to his credit. He has amassed a range of skills in tra­di­tional as well as new media. As a part of core teams work­ing with sev­eral inter­na­tional firms spe­cial­is­ing in print and web design­ing, busi­ness devel­op­ment strate­gis­ing and work process refine­ments, he has acquired insights in edi­to­r­ial excel­lence prac­tices, mod­ern edi­to­r­ial man­age­ment tech­niques and print and online prod­uct development.

He has under­gone train­ing in media con­ver­gence at Newsplex, Columbia, has vis­ited sev­eral media houses across con­ti­nents to study new media trends and is an active per­sonal tech­nol­ogy writer and a fre­quent blogger.

Ganesh Kulkarni, Director
He is a tech­no­crat media man. After grad­u­at­ing in instru­men­ta­tion engi­neer­ing, he plunged straight into devel­op­ment of online prod­ucts. During his three-year stint in main­stream media, he focused on online prod­uct devel­op­ment. He was instru­men­tal in con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion, design and devel­op­ment of SakaalTimes.com. He has also attended Social Media work­shop orga­nized by IFRA in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His skill set also includes man­ag­ing social media plat­forms includ­ing Facebook, Twitter and so on.

A reg­u­lar blog­ger him­self, he spe­cialises in devel­op­ing online com­mu­ni­ties and in online rep­u­ta­tion management.

Kiran Velhankar, Director (Design)
He is a skilled designer spe­cialised in design­ing news­pa­pers, books and mag­a­zines. He is also equipped with spe­cial skills for web and graphic design­ing. A ver­sa­tile designer hav­ing over 16 years of expe­ri­ence with Sakal Media Group, he has worked with renowned inter­na­tional news­pa­per designer Dr. Mario Garcia, web designer Mario Garcia Jr., Former art direc­tor of National Geographic Guenter Zwerina, and German news­pa­per designer Jan kny on var­i­ous design projects on and off-site. He has attended work­shops by renowned design­ers Peter Ong and Karl Gould.

His skill set includes design­ing and redesign­ing news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines, design­ing books, web­sites, brand­ing and mar­ket­ing col­lat­er­als, devel­op­ing info­graph­ics and so on.