Connect with us

MAM

Kapil Arora takes charge as Group CEO at Ogilvy Indonesia

Published

on

JAKARTA: Ogilvy has handed the keys of its Indonesia business to Kapil Arora, appointing the veteran advertising executive as group ceo, a move that underscores the agency’s bet on experienced leadership in one of South-east Asia’s most competitive creative markets.

Arora’s elevation comes two years after he moved to Jakarta as chief operating officer in January 2024. His promotion signals continuity rather than disruption, rewarding a career built on scaling businesses, building brands and running complex, multi-market operations.

A full-stack brand-builder with more than 25 years of cross-category and cross-border experience, Arora has worked across Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and now Jakarta, holding independent P&L responsibilities for the past 17 years. His track record blends creative ambition with commercial discipline, a mix Ogilvy values as agencies wrestle with digital-first clients and margin pressure.

In India, Arora is best known for his role in launching Vodafone and leading its national integrated brand team at Ogilvy, a stint that produced some of the country’s most recognisable advertising, including the Zoozoos, Happy to Help and Blackberry Boys campaigns. From 2013 to 2019, he led ogilvy group’s north India operations, a period marked by record new business wins, the network’s strongest showing at Cannes and the Delhi office growing to its largest-ever scale.

He also played a central role in behaviour-change communications for government programmes, helping set up the centre for social and behaviour change communication in collaboration with the Gates Foundation, Ashoka, Harvard universities and WPP.

In late 2019, Arora took on the role of co-chairman and ceo of 82.5 communications, WPP India’s youngest creative agency. Despite being born during the pandemic, the agency was built into a profitable second pillar within the Ogilvy roster in under four years, with a distinct client base and reputation for creative effectiveness.

Over his career, Arora has worked on an expansive list of Indian and global brands, including Raymond, TVS, Unilever teas, BCCL, Titan, Vodafone, KFC, Pizza Hut, Pernod Ricard, Perfetti, Dabur, Sprite, Uber, BMW, Himalaya, ACC, Nestlé, Kimberly-Clark and Indonesia’s Kawan Lama, among others. His work has won multiple honours, including three WPP global partnership in practice awards, Cannes Lions and Effies.

Alongside industry leadership, Arora remains deeply engaged in academia. He serves on the academic board of the Jagran Lake Institute of Media Studies and has taught at IIM Calcutta for over a decade, while regularly guest lecturing at other management institutes.

Now, as group ceo of Ogilvy Indonesia, Arora inherits a market that is young, digital-first and fiercely contested. His brief is clear: grow the business, sharpen the creative edge and prove that big agencies can still move fast. If his past is any guide, he is unlikely to take the scenic route.

Brands

Delhivery chairman Deepak Kapoor, independent director Saugata Gupta quit board

Published

on

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.

Continue Reading

MAM

Meta appoints Anuvrat Rao as APAC head of commerce partnerships

Published

on

SINGAPORE: Anuvrat Rao has taken charge as APAC  head of commerce and signals partnerships at Meta, steering monetisation deals across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp from Singapore. The former Google executive, known for launching Google Assistant, PWAs, AMP and Firebase across Asia-Pacific, steps into the role after a high-growth stint as chief business officer at Locofy.ai.

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.

Continue Reading

Brands

Brnd.me enters Europe as haircare brands power global expansion

Published

on

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.

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2026 Indian Television Dot Com PVT LTD