MAM
Jaskirat Singh Bawa: From fake news fighter to corporate firefighter
NEW DELHI: After nearly two decades of chasing lies across the internet and building teams to debunk them, Jaskirat Singh Bawa has decided that corporates need saving too. He’s just joined Edelman as senior advisor for risk and issues management, trading his role as global head of editorial operations at Logically for the rarefied air of strategic counsel.
It’s a natural progression for someone who’s spent the better part of his career in the trenches of digital warfare. At Logically, Bawa built a 60-strong, 16-language operation spanning 12 countries, generating £2.2m in annual revenue whilst keeping Meta, TikTok, Snap, and Google’s reputations from going completely sideways. Not a bad CV for someone who started as a television correspondent covering the supreme court.
Now he’s tackling a different beast: helping organisations navigate coordinated disinformation campaigns, bot-driven attacks, and AI-powered threats that spread faster than a tweet from a verified account. Deep fakes, synthetic narratives, automated networks—the whole ghastly digital carnival that keeps PR chiefs awake at night. Edelman’s betting that Bawa’s expertise in risk sensing and crisis response will prove rather useful as companies grapple with geopolitics, culture wars, and the occasional coordinated attack by bots with questionable parentage.
The move reunites him with Edelman India managing director of public and government affairs Vasudevan Rangarajan with whom he once shared field reporting duties in their television days. Also in the mix is Pierre Fitter, a law school chum who’s been on a parallel journey from live news to tackling global disinformation. Nothing like a bit of professional nostalgia to sweeten a career pivot.
Bawa’s pedigree is impeccable for the age of online mayhem. He co-founded WebQoof, one of India’s first fact-checking desks at The Quint, back when fake news was still a novelty rather than a daily plague. Before that, he covered elections, corruption scandals, and flash floods for India Today and NewsX, racking up 10,000 km on the road during the 2014 general elections as field producer for Election Express. He’s a US State Department IVLP Fellow, member of the Trust & Safety Professionals Association, and has provided expert commentary to everyone from the BBC to Bellingcat.
At Edelman, he’ll wield “state-of-the-art AI-powered social listening tools” and tap into the firm’s multidisciplinary global team—corporate speak for “we’ve got the tech and the talent to spot trouble before it trends.” Whether that’s enough to tame the wild west of digital disinformation remains to be seen, but if anyone’s qualified to try, it’s someone who’s already fought that war on multiple fronts.
One thing’s certain: in a world where a deep fake can tank a share price before lunch, Bawa’s particular set of skills are rather in demand. And Edelman’s just written the cheque to prove it.
Brands
Delhivery chairman Deepak Kapoor, independent director Saugata Gupta quit board
Gurugram: Delhivery’s boardroom is being reset. Deepak Kapoor, chairman and independent director, has resigned with effect from April 1 as part of a planned board reconstitution, the logistics company said in an exchange filing. Saugata Gupta, managing director and chief executive of FMCG major Marico and an independent director on Delhivery’s board, has also stepped down.
Kapoor exits after an eight-year stint that included steering the company through its 2022 stock-market debut, a period that saw Delhivery transform from a venture-backed upstart into one of India’s most visible logistics platforms. Gupta, who joined the board in 2021, departs alongside him, marking a simultaneous clearing of two senior independent seats.
“Deepak and Saugata have been instrumental in our process of recognising the need for and enabling the reconstitution of the board of directors in line with our ambitious next phase of growth,” said Sahil Barua, managing director and chief executive, Delhivery. The statement frames the exits less as departures and more as deliberate succession, a boardroom shuffle timed to the company’s evolving scale and strategy.
The resignations arrive amid broader governance recalibration. In 2025, Delhivery appointed Emcure Pharmaceuticals whole-time director Namita Thapar, PB Fintech founder and chairman Yashish Dahiya, and IIM Bangalore faculty member Padmini Srinivasan as independent directors, signalling a tilt towards consumer, fintech and academic expertise at the board level.
Kapoor’s tenure spanned Delhivery’s most defining years, rapid network expansion, public listing and the push towards profitability in a bruising logistics market. Gupta’s presence brought FMCG and brand-scale perspective during a period when ecommerce volumes and last-mile delivery economics were being rewritten.
The twin exits, effective from the new financial year, underscore a familiar corporate rhythm: founders consolidate, veterans rotate out, and fresh voices are ushered in to script the next chapter. In India’s hyper-competitive logistics race, even the boardroom does not stand still.
MAM
Meta appoints Anuvrat Rao as APAC head of commerce partnerships
At Locofy.ai, Rao helped convert a three-year free beta into a paid engine, clocking 1,000 subscribers and 15 enterprise clients within ten days of launch in September 2024. The low-code startup, backed by Accel and top tech founders, is famed for turning designs into production-ready code using proprietary large design models.
Before that, Rao founded generative AI venture 1Bstories, which was acquired by creative AI platform Laetro in mid-2024, where he briefly served as managing director for APAC. Alongside operating roles, he has been an active investor and advisor since 2020, backing startups such as BotMD, Muxy, Creator plus, Intellect, Sealed and CricFlex through a creator-economy-led thesis.
Rao spent over eight years at Google, holding senior partnership roles across search, assistant, chrome, web and YouTube in APAC, and earlier cut his teeth in strategy consulting at OC&C in London and investment finance at W. P. Carey in Europe and the US.
Brands
Brnd.me enters Europe as haircare brands power global expansion
Bengaluru: Brnd.me, the global consumer brands company formerly known as Mensa Brands, has entered the European market following strong momentum across the Middle East, the United States and Canada.
The company has launched across the UK, Germany, France and Spain, with plans to expand into Italy, the Netherlands and Poland over the next year. The push is being led by its haircare and aromatherapy brands, Botanic Hearth and Majestic Pure, marking Brnd.me’s first structured expansion into Europe.
The European beauty market represents a total addressable opportunity of over $4 billion across haircare and aromatherapy, supported by high digital adoption and demand for accessible, performance-led products.
Brnd.me’s hair care and aromatherapy business currently operates at an annual run rate of around $6 million, with Botanic Hearth and Majestic Pure delivering roughly 10 per cent month-on-month growth, driven by expansion and rising repeat demand.
To support regional growth, the company has appointed a general manager based in Germany and is evaluating investments in warehousing and local team expansion.
Early traction has been strong. Within weeks of launch, Botanic Hearth’s rosemary hair oil ranked among the top five hair oils in Germany, signalling strong consumer pull in a competitive market.
Brnd.me founder and chief executive officer Ananth Narayanan, said Europe represents the next phase of the company’s international strategy. He added that the European business is expected to scale to a $10 million annual run rate by the end of 2026, with long-term ambitions to reach $60 million over the next six years.
The company’s Europe strategy centres on digital-first distribution, repeat demand and TikTok-led discovery, alongside direct-to-consumer expansion to strengthen brand equity and margins.
The move also aligns with growing EU–India trade engagement, supporting long-term sourcing and cross-border supply chains.
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