Mediawide, the technology behind La Sentinelle’s web-to-web solutions

Founded some 17 years ago in India, Mediawide early understood the potential of digitization in an evolving world. Its partnership with La Sentinelle began when it developed the media group’s ad booking system.

Created in 1999 to develop a range of newspaper-based workflow solutions including editorial and advertising workflows, Mediawide is headquartered in Pune, India, where all of its programmers and support officers are located. The company has another office in the United States, which caters to theAmerican markets while its United Kingdom office is in charge of business for Europe and the Middle East region. Globally, Media-wide churns out an annual turnover of approximately $ 3 million annually.

Ish Parekh, founder of the company, recalls that Mediawide was launched to develop additional applications that would enhance the Adobe InDesign software. The company’s first main product was for the UK market, namely for regional and city newspapers having page inserts for properties on sale.

“We first went into the market with a solution that would allow these agents to create their pages online using the browser without the need of a designer – basically a web-to-print solution. They would then create the ads,” says Ish Parekh. Mediawide used to collaborate with a major publisher who owned around 40 regional newspapers throughout the UK. After this, the company moved on to the commercial market where the same software it had developed could be used to customize marketing collaterals like brochures. Beyond that, it also created web-to-web solutions which comprise the ability to create banner ads.

One of Mediawide’s biggest customers currently is Qatar Airways, while in Mauritius, it has been partnering for more than 10 years with media group La Sentinelle. “La Sentinelle had put out a tender for an ad booking system. We then bid for the tender and we developed the system specifically for them. They have been using it since then,” states Ish Parekh.

He explains the scope for companies such as Mediawide by citing the example of their collaboration with La Sentinelle. “The reason that we are here with La Sentinelle is that we are adding the functionality in the sense that we are allowing a sales person to go to a customer and create an ad in front of the latter on a laptop or tablet. They can see the ad as would be seen in the newspaper. This is not only for newspapers but for the commercial market as well,” explains Ish Parekh.

Flipick, one of the subsidiaries of Mediawide, has branched out in another direction, namely the education market. Broadly speaking, Flipick specializes in the digitization of educational books. The company’s production service is hence working with big publishing houses like Pearson and McGraw-Hill – taking their content and adding interaction by means of audio and video.

This technique can prove to be very efficient to illustrate diagrams, carry out assessments and make PowerPoint presentations more effective. As such, it appeals to the corporate market too. As far as Mauritius is concerned, Ish Parekh points out that since the government provides tablets to pupils across the country, it is also going to need content for interaction. The local market can thus be a potential market for the company.