MAM
Radio one’s renaissance man gets bigger brief
MUMBAI: Some people struggle to manage a single job. Hrishikesh Kannan is doing four—and has just been handed a fifth.
The radio veteran, better known as Hrishi K to his listeners, has spent September expanding his writ across HT Media’s entire radio portfolio. Already national brand head at Radio One, where he dreams up 360-degree branded solutions and chases revenue whilst hosting a daily morning show, Kannan now oversees brand strategy for Fever FM and Radio Nasha as well. It is an empire-building exercise that would exhaust most mortals.
The 30-year broadcasting stalwart has mastered the art of role accretion. He started as a radio host in 1994 at Times FM Delhi and never really stopped. Even as he climbed the ranks—national programming head, brand solutions architect, revenue rainmaker—he refused to abandon the microphone. Every weekday morning, without fail, he presents a show that beams across Radio One’s India network. It is a peculiar form of professional gluttony, and it appears to be working.
Kannan’s latest promotion, effective September 2025, makes him chief brand solutions officer and head of intellectual properties for HT Media’s radio business. Translation: he now devises money-spinning ideas for three radio brands instead of one, coordinates sponsorships and branded content across platforms (radio, YouTube, Instagram, live events), and still finds time to supervise national programming at Radio One. Oh, and host that morning show.
The portfolio is impressive. Radio One targets the English-speaking urban elite. Fever FM chases the Hindi heartland. Radio Nasha trafficks in retro Hindi cinema nostalgia. Each brand has its own audience, its own quirks, its own revenue streams. Kannan’s job is to extract maximum value from all three without letting any ball drop.
His track record suggests he might just pull it off. At Radio One, his branded solutions work has won awards and pulled in sponsorships for bespoke client campaigns. Revenue generation, he notes with characteristic immodesty, became “daily fodder” for him to “work on and succeed.” The man is not troubled by false humility.
Kannan also runs Radiohead, a maverick audio production outfit he founded in 2004 that churns out podcasts, audio plays, radio promos and book narrations. Because apparently running three radio brands whilst hosting a daily show was not quite enough to fill the diary.
His career spans the entire arc of Indian private radio, from Times FM’s pioneering days in the 1990s through the satellite radio experiment at WorldSpace to the current digital-plus-terrestrial era. He has worked for Radio Mirchi, All India Radio, Win 94.6 FM and just about every other frequency on the dial. If Indian radio has a living memory, Kannan is it.
Whether one man can sustain this level of professional plate-spinning indefinitely is an open question. For now, though, HT Media is betting that its busiest executive can handle an even busier brief. If anyone can turn three radio brands into a unified revenue juggernaut whilst still turning up for the breakfast shift, it is probably him.
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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