HT Media unified 5,500 employees on Google Workspace, eliminating version chaos, enabling real-time co-authoring, and strengthening cross-team collaboration across its print, digital, radio, OTT, and job-search businesses.
HT Media Group is among India's largest media and entertainment conglomerates, spanning print, audio, and digital verticals. It has remained crucial and relevant for nearly a century in influencing culture and shaping public opinion. The Group also owns popular Internet businesses, including OTTplay, Slurrp, and Healthshots.
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India
HT Media unified 5,500 employees on Google Workspace, eliminating version chaos, enabling real-time co-authoring, and strengthening cross-team collaboration across its print, digital, radio, OTT, and job-search businesses.
Google Workspace Results
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Teams co-author content in real time using , eliminating version chaos
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Employees collaborate more easily across departments on , reducing email attachments
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Users accelerate summarization, drafting, and idea generation with
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IT secures identity and device access with and
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Teams streamline meetings and distributed communication using
A century-old media organization builds a modern collaboration foundation
“Now everyone is on one platform. Google Workspace has opened the door to more ideas, open discussions, and faster decisions.” - Manish Aggarwal, Head of IT Infrastructure and Network Security
has been a cornerstone of India’s media landscape for nearly a century, reaching millions through print journalism, digital news, radio, job-search platforms, and OTTplay, its streaming service. As audiences move to mobile apps and personalized digital experiences, the organization has accelerated its digital transformation across all business lines.
"Media is no longer only print or television. Everything is moving to digital," says Manish Aggarwal, Head of IT Infrastructure and Network Security. "To keep up with how customers consume news today, we must modernize how we work internally."
Before 2025, HT Media operated in a hybrid environment where a portion of teams used while others relied on a legacy productivity suite. The split created silos, inconsistencies, and inefficiencies in workflows. Version chaos was common, collaboration was fragmented, and employees often exchanged documents through long email chains.
Recognizing the need for a single, cloud-native platform, HT Media made a strategic decision: unify its entire workforce — more than 5,500 employees across 40–45 offices in India — on Google Workspace.
Eliminating version chaos with real-time collaboration
“AI built into Google Workspace with Gemini gives users confidence because our data stays within our tenant.” - Manish Aggarwal, Head of IT Infrastructure and Network Security
One of the biggest challenges for HT Media was managing content and documents across teams that used different tools. There was no reliable way to co-author documents in real time, and critical discussions frequently devolved into numerous email attachments.
"Users were on different platforms, so collaborating was always a challenge," Aggarwal explains. "Now that everyone is on Google Workspace, it has opened the door to more ideas, open discussions, and faster decisions."
The cloud-native nature of , , and eliminated multiple versions of files and enabled real-time co-authoring. Teams update shared documents simultaneously, comment asynchronously, and resolve tasks directly within the same Google Sheets spreadsheet.
The integrated Google Workspace experience also helps reduce silos. Whether working within , , , or , employees see updates instantly:
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Google Drive file shared? → Appears in Google Chat.
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Google Calendar invite updated? → Appears immediately across devices.
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Need AI support? → Google Workspace with Gemini ensures natural-language AI is accessible from any Google Workspace app.
This fluidity has reshaped how departments interact, especially in fast-paced business units such as digital news, radio programming, and OTT streaming.
Security, access, and simplicity — built into Google Workspace
“Migrating 5,500 users onto Google Workspace without disruption was a dream-come-true moment, a smooth transition made possible by Searce’s deployment and migration expertise.” - Manish Aggarwal, Head of IT Infrastructure and Network Security
For a large media organization handling sensitive editorial content, audience data, and internal workflows, security and access control are critical. Google Workspace provided HT Media with a secure structure that didn’t compromise ease of use.
Aggarwal highlights four key advantages:
Identity-first security
With and , HT Media strengthens device access policies, unifies sign-in, and ensures that only authorized users can access corporate systems.
Lightweight, browser-first experience
Employees appreciate the simplicity of Google Workspace. "It is very lightweight," Aggarwal says. "Users don’t need to install heavy applications to benefit from the solutions, which improves device performance."
Powerful search
Even large mailboxes, some with a decade of history, are searchable within seconds.
Fast adoption due to familiarity
"Most people already use Gmail in their personal lives, before they join the company. That familiarity helped us onboard users without requiring deep training," he adds.
A seamless, zero-downtime migration of 5,500+ users
Migrating an organization as large and distributed as HT Media required meticulous planning. Mailboxes ranged from 2GB to 300GB, and the organization stored more than 70TB of file data. Business continuity could not be compromised.
"It was a massive challenge," Aggarwal says. "We needed to ensure 100% data transfer, including email, files, everything, without impacting operations."
Working closely with Work Transformation Partner Searce, who managed change and adoption across all business units alongside the Google Cloud team, HT Media ensured success by:
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Conducting a full infrastructure study
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Creating a department-wise and location-wise rollout plan
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Identifying integration points with existing systems
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Running pilot migrations with the IT team
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Building an internal "train the trainer" network
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Deploying local engineers to offices across India
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Hosting extensive learning and adoption workshops
According to Aggarwal, the execution exceeded expectations: "I don’t recall a single case where someone couldn’t send or receive mail during migration. It was seamless, and honestly, a dream-come-true moment for such a large organization."
Exploring AI through Google Workspace with Gemini
With Google Workspace fully deployed, and guided by implementation partner Searce, HT Media’s next transformation phase focuses on generative AI. Employees had previously used public AI tools for drafting and research, raising significant security and data-governance concerns.
Google Workspace with Gemini is well positioned to solve that.
Secure, in-tenant AI
"Our data stays within our tenant," Aggarwal emphasizes. "It’s not used for model training. That gives users confidence."
Rapid adoption
Aggarwal estimates that close to half the organization now uses AI features regularly, such as for summarizing emails, analyzing documents, generating ideas, and assisting with analytics. "When I open Gmail, it summarizes the email right at the top. That kind of experience drives adoption naturally," he shares.
Department-specific use cases
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Legal teams use Google Workspace with Gemini for initial document vetting
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Finance and MIS teams analyze data and prepare reports
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IT uses Google Workspace with Gemini for summarizing logs and drafting responses
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Editorial teams explore rapid content research and ideation
Building a future-ready digital media organization
HT Media is now piloting , evaluating automated workflows that connect Google Workspace with databases, CRMs, and analytics systems.
"With Gemini Enterprise, we can forecast trends, analyze readership patterns, and integrate deeper data sources," Aggarwal says.
HT Media is still early in its long-term digital transformation, but unifying on Google Workspace has given the organization the foundation it needs to evolve quickly.
"As we grow into digital media, Google Workspace helps us bring data and workflows together," Aggarwal concluded. "Google Workspace with Gemini will help us move even faster, but Google Workspace itself is the backbone."
MSP
SearceSearce is an AI-native, engineering-led modern tech consultancy that empowers clients to futurify by delivering real business outcomes. Over the last 20+ years, we have been a trusted technology partner for over 3,000 clients across Retail, Travel Transportation & Logistics, Financial Services, Healthcare, and other industries. Driven by an engineering excellence mindset, we care most about delivering intelligent, impactful & futuristic business outcomes. We specialize in modernizing business processes, infrastructure, and applications by leveraging our expertise in AI-native cloud platform modernization, data-to-decision intelligence, modern product engineering, and intelligent work and business operations. We take pride in building long-lasting relationships with our clients, striving to solve for "better" with every iteration.
