Praphul Misra launches OOH agency Our Initiative Media

Praphul Misra has launched Oi media (Our Initiative Media), and has taken over as its managing director. His mission at Oi media is to help the OOH media (out-of-home) industry improve its position in the media eco-system by harnessing information technology in order to enhance the ease of doing business.

Misra brings with him a rich experience of having launched and developed three successful start-ups. In 1993, he played a key role in setting up The WorldMark Group, Inc., Dallas TX, a market research and consulting firm in the US. After successfully launching and placing The WorldMark Group on a growth trajectory, Misra returned to India in 1996 to help start Result: McCann, the direct marketing agency of McCann-Erickson India, now known as MRM Worldwide, as director, planning and development. He successfully led Result: McCann, and placed it among the top three agencies in India within five years, before moving on to kick-start NetCarrots in 2001.

At NetCarrots, Misra focussed on managing end-to-end loyalty programmes for several large MNCs using a proprietary enterprise IT platform which significantly brought down time-to-market and associated costs for clients, in addition to increasing 'same-store' revenues.

Misra's mission at Oi media is to bring in transparency, measurability, and ease of doing business among the various stakeholders of OOH media. He aspires to do so by offering proprietary technology, that is backed by quantifiable and measurable metrics, to clients, agencies, and suppliers. The stakeholders will be able to use smart, easy-to-use tools to not only cut their enquiry-to-quotation, and execution-to-billing cycle times, but will also be able to improve their campaign effectiveness and yield.

Misra is an alumnus of IIT Roorkee, and an MBA from State University of New York at Buffalo, USA. He is an advisor to Literacy India (NGO), and co-founder of EHSAS'81 Foundation, set up by his high school classmates to focus on underprivileged girl-child education, healthcare, and related social causes. He also supports the Sufi Kathak Foundation, a non- profit cultural organisation, which promotes inter and intra-cultural education and integration.