MUMBAI: Bhaskar Das, the president of Bennett Coleman & Company Limited (BCCL), has retired from the print media behemoth that owns some of India‘s most successful print publications.

Das, who had joined BCCL as a management trainee in 1980, has spent 32 years with the company. His prime responsibility was maximisation of volume and market share.

The BCCL president quickly rose to the top echelon of the company starting with his appointment as the head of the advertising and sales department in Gujarat just a year after he joined. Two years later he took over as sales head of the Eastern Region in Kolkata and in 1986 he became the profit centre head for East.

In 1990, he was appointed as the profit centre head of Gujarat and he took over as director of the Western Zone of Response (ad sales) in 1995. In 2005 he was elevated to executive president of BCCL and then president in 2011.

MUMBAI: Indian Merchants? Chamber (IMC) is organising a day-long conference, ?Fusion 2012?, on 1 February in Mumbai.

Fusion brings sports, media and entertainment industry on a single dais to enable the participants to interact with industry biggies and celebrities sharing ideas the theme ?C3i: Content ? Creation to Consumption & Audience Involvement?.

IMC president Bhavna Doshi said, ?The content industry is growing exponentially, reaching out to a multitude of consumers - across multiple platforms - in new and scalable formats with new and innovative monetisation strategies and programmes. With new generation of eReaders, tablets and smart phones enabling the consumers to be free and paid, relationships are making for an expanded universe of content creation and consumption.?

The conference will look at new trends and technologies that are transforming and redefining relationships that combine these three sectors and the consumer. Apart from many contemporary trends which will be explored during the conference, it will also deliberate on ethics in journalism and advertising.

The Conference, hosted and moderated by Kabir Bedi, will be inaugurated by Union Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Ajay Maken and will have the industry leaders from the fields of media, entertainment, advertisement, film and TV, animation and content production, telecom and sports marketing as speakers and participants.

The speakers at the conference include Sunil Lulla (MD & CEO, Times TV Network); Bhaskar Das (ED, BCCL-TOI); Subhash Ghai (film director); Santosh Desai (CEO, Future Brands), Srikant Sastri (Country Chair, Vivaki & Publicis Groupe), Geet Sethi (Billiards champion), Alok Malik (MD, ESPN), Shobhaa De (Author, Columnist, Novelist) and Arnab Goswami (ED, Times Television).