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Category: People

  • Sandeep Goyal to take over as the managing director of Rediffusion

    Sandeep Goyal to take over as the managing director of Rediffusion

    New Delhi: Advertising agency Rediffusion founders Diwan Arun Nanda and Ajit Balakrishnan on Monday announced their decision to step back from the day-to-day management of the ad agency.

    Mogae Media founder and chairman and industry veteran Sandeep Goyal, who served as president of Rediffusion  from 1997 to 2001, will take over as the managing director.

    The 48-year-old agency has been acquired by Goyal led Integrated marketing and communications agency Mogae Media which was set up in 2012. The deal also includes sibling agency Everest Brand Solutions.

    While Nanda will continue to mentor the agency and will stay on as chairman, Balakrishnan will step back from all day-to-day operations here. “He will focus his attention on Rediff.com, the technology world and public service and will be always available to Rediffusion for any guidance it may need going forward,” said the agency in a statement issued on Monday.

    One of the largest independent full service ad agencies, Rediffusion was set up in July, 1973 by Diwan Arun Nanda, Ajit Balkrishnan, and Mohammed Khan. In 1994, agency holding network WPP had acquired Rediffusion and merged it with US agency Young & Rubicam (Y&R) to form Rediffusion Y&R. In 2018, Nanda and Balakrishnan gained 100 per cent control of the agency to become an independent entity once again.

    Over the years, it has created some of India’s most iconic and memorable advertising for brands like Jenson & Nicholson, Eveready, Parle, Garden Vareli, Godfrey Phillips, Tata Tea, Lakmé, Telco (Tata Motors), Colgate Palmolive, Citibank and Maruti Suzuki.

    It was also credited for launching the brand Airtel in 1995. The agency currently works with Tata Sons, Parle, Tata Trusts, Tata Motors, State Bank of India, Liebherr, Larsen & Toubro, Brookfield, PGIM, Orra, Eveready, Dey’s Medical, Sulekha, Danone, Sun Pharma, Dr. Reddy’s, Audi India and many more.

    “Rediffusion has been known over the years for ‘advertising that became famous and part of the language and the culture of the people’, and helped brands build long term, and lasting equity with consumers”, said Rediffusion chairman Diwan Arun Nanda on Monday.

    ‘Whenever you see colour, think of us’ for Jenson & Nicholson was a path breaking campaign. So was ‘Hum Red & White peene walon ki baat hi kuchh aur hai’ for Red & White cigarettes, ‘Annu taazgi de de’ for Tata Tea, ‘Gimme Red!’ for Eveready and the recent ‘Isko laga dala, toh life jhingalala’ for Tata Sky. Rediffusion was also responsible for creating the cult ad film featuring AR Rahman, with the very memorable Airtel brand tune that has had the highest number of downloads in history.

  • Lenovo elevates Shailendra Katyal to lead India business

    Lenovo elevates Shailendra Katyal to lead India business

    NEW DELHI: Lenovo has elevated Shailendra Katyal to managing director of its PC and smart devices business group (PCSD) India and site leader for Lenovo Group in the country. The appointment comes into effect 1 May 2021.

    Katyal will take over from Rahul Agarwal, who has decided to move on after 20 years at the technology company.

    “I am confident in Shailendra’s success thanks to his extensive experience in Lenovo and in the industry. I would also like to thank Rahul for everything he has done to maximise Lenovo’s growth over the past two decades,” said Lenovo Asia Pacific president Amar Babu.

    Katyal is currently executive director at Lenovo India PC and smart devices group, leading the consumer business. He first joined Lenovo in 2011, and has held roles in marketing, consumer PC and tablets, home and small business, as well as e-commerce.

    Prior to joining Lenovo, he spent a decade building iconic FMCG brands.

  • Karima Zmerli is Edelman’s new global head – performance & predictive intelligence

    Karima Zmerli is Edelman’s new global head – performance & predictive intelligence

    NEW DELHI: Communications firm Edelman has tapped Karima Zmerli as global head of performance and predictive intelligence for its data and intelligence unit (DxI). 

    In the new role, Zmerli will lead performance and predictive intelligence globally and oversee media buying and marketing strategies for clients. She will be based in New York and report to Edelman DxI global chief data & analytics officer Yannis Kotziagkiaouridis. 

    The hire is part of Edelman’s effort to grow its media, data and technology capabilities as clients adapt to digital transformation and major changes to the media ecosystem, such as the loss of Apple’s IDFA mobile identifier and third-party cookies phasing out.

    Zmerli joins Edelman from the media agency world, as chief data sciences officer at GroupM’s Wavemaker since 2016, where she helped generate over $1 billion in new business. She joined Edelman to help clients adapt to new use cases for data and technology as privacy becomes top of mind.

    “We have to open our horizons and think about the consumer relationship with the brand differently than in a transactional way,” Zmerli said. “Edelman is in a very unique position to understand consumer trust in corporations and brands, a fundamental element to brand strategy and communication.”

    Zmerli is Edelman’s latest hire in a bid to bolster its research and data capabilities, with talent across data science, engineering, software development and performance marketing. Most recently, the firm hired David Bartram Shaw as SVP and global head of data science;  Anjuli Bedi as global head of behavioural science and psychometrics; Tim Hwang as global head of product; Jacob Loban as EVP and US head of performance intelligence; and Matt Sato as EVP

  • Madhu Malhotra joins Edelweiss General Insurance as chief technology officer

    Madhu Malhotra joins Edelweiss General Insurance as chief technology officer

    Mumbai: Digital insurer Edelweiss General Insurance (EGI) has onboarded Madhu Malhotra as its chief technology officer. She will spearhead the technology function at EGI and drive digital innovation in line with the brand’s strategy of transforming the insurance landscape in India through tech driven solutions and offerings.

    Malhotra is an eminent technology leader who brings with her two decades of rich experience across fintech and telecom domains. She has a proven track-record in leading digital innovations, engineering modernisations and transformations and streamlining cloud initiatives.

    Prior to her new role, Malhotra was head of technology at Spectra. She was also associated with Airtel for 10 years and held many leadership positions there. While at Airtel Bank, she led the launch of the first payments bank of India, headed the financial inclusion vertical to deliver large scale customer impact and drove agile adoption and transformation.

    Edelweiss General Insurance executive director & CEO Shanai Ghosh said, “Technology has proved to be a game changer for the Insurance industry, with the potential to transform the entire service ecosystem and enhance customer experience. At EGI, we are well placed to leverage this transformation, given our digital operating model. I am excited to welcome Madhu to be part of our digital journey and lead this strategic business function for us. Her experience and expertise will help build a robust technology function that will help drive our business strategy. I wish her the very best for an enriching career with us.”

    Malhotra added, “As CTO my focus will be to create future ready digital platform and products offering state of the art digital experience and capabilities to our customers. I will strive for a culture of innovation to make the customer experience simple and transparent. I am incredibly excited to play a key role in accelerating this digital journey in the growth of EGI that Shanai has envisioned.”

  • Former Maruti MD Jagdish Khattar no more

    Former Maruti MD Jagdish Khattar no more

    New Delhi : Former managing director of Maruti Suzuki India, and veteran of the Indian automobile industry, Jagdish Khattar passed away on Monday due to cardiac arrest. He was 78.

    Khattar had joined the company as director (marketing) in July 1993 and went on to become the managing director in 1999. He was first appointed as a government nominee, and then in May 2002 as Suzuki Motor Corporation (SMC) nominee.

    He had served Maruti Udyog for 14 years and steered the company towards remarkable growth. His last day at Maruti as MD, at age 65, was on 18 December 2007.

    Prior to this he had worked as joint secretary in the ministry of steel, government of India, for about five years and held several administrative positions in the Uttar Pradesh government before that.

    In 2008, Khattar launched his next venture – Carnation Auto to develop a multi-brand automobile sales and service network.

  • Dukaan.com appoints Mani Karthik as VP – marketing

    Dukaan.com appoints Mani Karthik as VP – marketing

    NEW DELHI: Dukaan.com has appointed entrepreneur, blogger & consultant Mani Karthik as VP – marketing. Prior to this, Karthik held the post of chief marketing officer at Rankz. He is also the founder of BackToIndia, an online community that’s on a mission to help NRIs return back to India.

    Karthik posted the development on professional networking site LinkedIn:

    “Quick update. Will be taking over as VP of Marketing with Dukaan. So kicked about two things. First, working with an amazing team that’s weaving magic and second, helping scale a product that I believe can help India grow with more businesses, more entrepreneurs get online (perhaps even for the first time), from her remotest parts. Proud, excited and happy about this challenge ahead.”

    Founded in 2020, Dukaan is a ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) platform which enables small retailers with zero programming skills to set up an online store. Apart from this, each merchant gets a unique store link on which they can showcase their products or services and further share this link with customers over social media channels.

    The digital start-up that helps local stores to sell their products online had announced in October last year that it has raised $6 million as a part of its seed funding round, co-led by Matrix Partners India and Lightspeed India Partners.

    With Covid2019 accelerating the shift to digital, Dukaan has already onboarded over 2.7 million merchants onto its platform across India since its launch.
     

  • Zomato appoints four women directors

    Zomato appoints four women directors

    NEW DELHI: Restaurant aggregator and food delivery platform Zomato has appointed five independent directors, including four women, on its eight-member board. 

    The newly appointed independent women directors are ex-Olympian Aparna Popat, Zalora Group former chief executive officer Gunjan Tilak Raj Soni, Airveda founder Namita Gupta, and ABN Amro Bank NV (India) former head of private health business Sutapa Banerjee. The male member in this new cluster of independent directors is TARI founder Kaushik Dutta. 

    The other three members on this board of directors are Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal, Info Edge founder Sanjeev Bikchandani, and Ant Group SVP Douglas Faegin. 

    “Up until now, we had a largely investor-run board. But today, I’m elated to share that we have five independent members on our board of eight people, four of whom are women. More than gender diversity though, what we have always been gunning for is cognitive diversity across levels in our organisation. Evidence-based, research shows that a key prerequisite for innovation comes from cognitively diverse people” wrote Deepinder Goyal on Zomato’s blog. 

    Goyal also added that he is happy about the fact that “each of our board members come from different occupational backgrounds bringing diverse cognitive skills and perspectives to the table.”

  • Silicon Valley techie Narayan Gangadhar joins Angel Broking as CEO

    Silicon Valley techie Narayan Gangadhar joins Angel Broking as CEO

    Mumbai: Fintech brokerage firm Angel Broking has roped in Silicon Valley veteran Narayan Gangadhar as its new CEO.

    Narayan has more than two decades of global experience leading technology businesses at top-tier Silicon Valley companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Uber. He brings operating experience leading highly disruptive businesses by driving innovation in product, technology, capability building, and processes automation.

    Gangadhar was head of technology at Uber in San Francisco where he led the company’s core infrastructure, machine learning, data platform, and data science teams of over 650+ employees across the globe. During his tenure, Uber scaled to over 400+ cities globally completing over 14 million trips daily. At Google, he led large product and engineering teams to launch the first set of the search giant’s cloud infrastructure services, such as Compute Engine, Cloud SQL, Container Engines. He also led large teams responsible for developing the overall application infrastructure which power productivity apps like Google Drive, Google Docs, etc.

    Prior to Google, Gangadhar was the general manager and director at Amazon Web Services where he developed the Cloud Database business. He was most recently the founder & CEO of a robotics start-up in San Francisco that develops automated urban mobility solutions

    “The Indian market is at an interesting juncture as more people make technology a part of their daily lifestyles,” said Gangadhar. “As a CEO, my entire focus will be on unlocking superior efficiency for all stakeholders. The overarching objective is to make the product more accessible in the mass market.”

    Angel Broking CMD Dinesh Thakkar said, “Narayan is the right person to lead Angel Broking along its journey as a leader in this industry. He is a well-rounded engineer with great leadership qualities and will add significant value to our existing digital assets. Plus, he will help us realise our aspirations to become a preferred Fintech company in India. With Narayan leading the team, I am sure we will scale new heights in making international standard apps, offering world-class customer experience, and taking best-in-class AI/ML journeys for new and existing customers to understand investing and trading well.”

  • Akhil Almeida is new head of marketing at Aegon Life

    Akhil Almeida is new head of marketing at Aegon Life

    MUMBAI: Digital life insurance company Aegon Life has onboarded Akhil Almeida as its head of marketing. In this role, Almeida will be responsible for heading the company's branding, communication, and other digital marketing functions. 

    Almeida has more than 16 years of experience in various sectors of marketing that include media + OTT, e-commerce, tech, FMCG, auto, and BFSI. Before joining Aegon Life, he has worked in companies like Mahindra Group, Ignitee, VJive Networks, Kia Motors, and Citi. 

    Almeida said that Aegon Life is all set to revolutionise the insurance buying experience. 

    "We’re on a journey to radically enhance the insurance buying experience – combining innovative and relevant products, consumer-centric experiences at the right price. We’re leveraging data and consumer insights to support product development and sales efforts, increase awareness, and market innovative products," he added. 

    Aegon Life managing director & chief executive officer Satishwar Balakrishnan said, "Akhil is a highly skilled leader with experience in leading marketing initiatives for consumer-led brands in India. He has closely studied consumer preferences and evolving digital behaviours, which will help us develop strategies to reach our target audience, keeping the brand essence alive and agile. We look forward to the expertise he brings to the table, which will help us in enhancing Aegon Life’s positioning as India’s first and only fully digital life insurance company."

  • Pankaj Gupta joins Coinbase from Google Pay

    Pankaj Gupta joins Coinbase from Google Pay

    NEW DELHI: In an attempt to build a strong team from scratch, American cryptocurrency exchange company Coinbase has appointed Pankaj Gupta as its vice president – engineering and site lead for India. Before joining Coinbase, Gupta was leading Google Pay Engineering in APAC. 

    To expand its operations in India, Coinbase is all set to hire hundreds of employees across various roles in the next one or two years. 

    "For the next phase of my life after Google, I am thrilled to share that I will be joining Coinbase as VP of engineering and site lead for India. I’ll be responsible for leading and building the company’s technology hub in India from scratch. I will be hiring across India," wrote Gupta on his blog. 

    He added that India has world-class tech expertise and some of the brightest minds in the industry. He also expressed his aim to tap and develop local talent in India. 

    "The plan is to hire hundreds of employees across all levels in engineering, product management, UX design, research, and program management within the next one to two years to build out a full tech hub in India. Together, we’ll work on some of the most interesting challenges spanning the full modern tech stack — including deep tech areas like blockchains, data engineering, infrastructure, machine learning, and more," he added. 

    On 25 March, Coinbase had said that the company is planning to open a physical office in Hyderabad. The decision to expand its operations in India comes at a time when the central government is mulling a ban on cryptocurrency.