FreeWheel Appoints Utpal Kalita as Chief Technology Officer for Blockgraph
May 23 2019 - 12:30PM
Business Wire
Blockgraph is an industry initiative designed
to create a secure way to use data and share information.
Kalita leads Blockgraph’s engineering team and
partners with leadership to build and drive the initiative’s
blockchain-based platform, product development and overall
strategy.
FreeWheel, A Comcast Company (Nasdaq: CMCSA), announced that it
has appointed Utpal Kalita as chief technology officer and vice
president, engineering, for Blockgraph, an industry initiative
designed to create a secure way to use data and share
information.
Kalita joined Blockgraph in this newly created position earlier
this year. In this role, Kalita is tasked with leading, mentoring
and growing Blockgraph’s team of engineers. He also partners with
FreeWheel leadership to build and drive the initiative’s
blockchain-based platform, product development and overall
strategy.
An engineer by training, Kalita brings more than 20 years of
experience at companies spanning DoubleClick (now Google), Tremor
Video (now Telaria), Xaxis (part of WPP’s GroupM), and Eyeview
Digital. Over the course of his career, he has helmed teams
spanning multiple disciplines and geographies, led product
development and the launch of new technological capabilities and
offerings.
He reports to Blockgraph General Manager Jason Manningham.
“In today’s data-driven age, our vision for creating Blockgraph
was to offer the entire advertising ecosystem the ability to
seamlessly provide marketers best-in-class data capabilities while
protecting, first and foremost, consumer privacy,” Manningham said.
“As we looked for a CTO to help us realize our transformative
vision, it was critical to find a leader with a strong track record
of leading and inspiring teams to pioneer and build large scale
platforms and Utpal stood out.”
Prior to joining Blockgraph, Kalita served as chief technology
officer for Eyeview Digital. There, he oversaw teams responsible
for designing, building and scaling multiple products and solutions
that helped cement the company’s position as one of the industry’s
leading video marketing technology firms. Before that, he was vp,
head of engineering at Tremor Video, where he developed the
company’s supply and demand side platforms.
Kalita has also held leadership positions at Xaxis and 24/7
Media, two WPP companies which later merged. He began his career as
an engineering manager at DoubleClick, which was later acquired by
Google.
Comcast Advertising announced the launch of Blockgraph (then
known as the Blockchain Insights Platform) in June 2017. In late
2018, it teamed up with industry partners to unveil Blockgraph’s
next major development: the formation of a new, peer-to-peer
platform to jumpstart the use of secure data sharing for advanced
television advertising. FreeWheel has spearheaded this initiative
to date as part of its broader ambitions to create a data and
technology enabled premium video marketplace.
About Blockgraph
Blockgraph is an industry initiative focused on creating a more
secure way to use data and share information. It is designed to
become the “identity layer” for the TV industry, providing a
platform on which media companies and publishers can offer
marketers best-in-class data capabilities without disclosing
identifiable user data to third parties – adding additional
protections to user privacy. For more information on Blockgraph, or
to find out how you can participate, please visit:
www.blockgraph.co.
About FreeWheel
FreeWheel, A Comcast Company, empowers all segments of The New
TV Ecosystem. We are structured to provide the full breadth of
solutions the advertising industry needs to achieve their goals. We
provide the technology, data enablement, and convergent
marketplaces required to ensure buyers and sellers can transact
across all screens, across all data types and all sales channels,
in order to ensure the ultimate goal – results for marketers.
With offices in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Paris,
Beijing, and across the globe, FreeWheel, A Comcast Company, stands
to advocate for the entire industry through the FreeWheel Council
for Premium Video. For more information, please
visit www.freewheel.tv, and follow us
on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190523005534/en/
Elaine Wong, 929-388-9088elaine_wong@comcast.com
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