Brands
‘Stand Up’ to street harassment, says L’Oréal Paris
NEW DELHI: On the occasion of United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, L’Oréal Paris has launched its international bystander intervention training programme – Stand Up – in India.
As per an ActionAid Survey of 2016, 79 per cent of women living in Indian cities have been subjected to harassment or violence in public. Even the national capital and the financial capital of the country are not able to provide a completely safe environment for their female residents, highlights a 2019-report by Praja Foundation, stating that 50 per cent of people in Delhi and 21 per cent in Mumbai felt that women were not safe in the respective cities.
These are just a few numbers but very clearly indicate how massive the issue of street harassment in India is.
Launching the campaign and an associated website in India via a virtual press conference, L’Oréal Paris general manager India Pau Gruart stated that the issue of women safety is very close to LÓréal’s brand ethos.
“As a brand, we have always stood up for women empowerment but we always want to take one step further and make a concrete difference. This initiative deepens our sense of purpose and it is in total consistency with our brand essence,” he added.
The brand has partnered with NGO Breakthrough to deliver on-ground training and sensitise the community towards the problem of harassment in public spaces and make them safer for people across genders. They are aiming to train 1 million people in India in the skill of upstanding using the 5Ds defined by NGO Hollaback!: Direct, Delegate, Document, Distract, Delay.
Breakthrough India president and CEO Sohini Bhattacharya noted, “Breakthrough has been working for over 20 years to make violence and discrimination against women unacceptable. We are very proud to partner with L’Oréal Paris in empowering young people to take action, for themselves, and for others, now and in the future. Bystanders are often not equipped to tackle street harassment and feel helpless during such situations. Based on the expert-approved 5D’s methodology, Stand Up makes a clarion call to citizens to take action against street harassment, by encouraging them to undertake a simple and effective training program, that not only supports victims but also enables bystanders to safely intervene. Stand Up will enable women to reclaim public spaces.”
Brand ambassador Aditi Rao Hydari added that she finds this approach more empowering than physically harming the preparator and feels that this will sensitise the community more towards cases of harassment in public spaces.
The brand with the support from Breakthrough is aiming to amplify the cause across the country, even to the remotest corners. It is already planning influencer activities and campus programmes to make the training more accessible.
Gruart shared, “At the heart of Stand Up, which is our most important global cause as a brand, is the training programme. We are going to direct all our marketing activities towards the training. For instance, we could have a classic tool of digital media; all inputs there will be one click away from the online training. We are also seeking influencer support and brand ambassador support to amplify it.”
Bhattacharya continued, “We are willing to make the youth of the country the true crusaders for this cause. We will be enrolling people for fellowship programmes and training them in 5Ds and how they can teach further. They then will act as our ambassadors.”
Gruart also noted they are looking for bigger partnerships across the country that might start coming into shape in 2021.
L’Oréal Paris has a wide portfolio of products for the Indian market including makeup, skin-care, hair colour, hair care and men's products. In 2020, the brand roped in actor Aditi Rao Hydari, former cricketer Mithali Raj and popular TV personality Shakti Mohan as its brand endorsers for the Indian market. It has launched several campaigns with these brand endorsers. L’Oréal Paris closely works with salons and hair-dressers who act as the last mile influencers for the brand.
Brands
Ahmad Muneeb elevated to VP – HR centre of excellence at Zepto
MUMBAI: Zepto has elevated Ahmad Muneeb to vice president – HR centre of excellence, placing him at the helm of the company’s total rewards, executive compensation and organisational effectiveness as the quick-commerce firm powers through a high-growth phase.
The move follows his stint as senior director of the HR COE, where he played a central role in preparing the company for IPO readiness while scaling its people analytics capabilities. During this period, Muneeb helped align complex performance management structures with more streamlined and scalable employee experience frameworks.
In his new role, he will steer the design of total rewards strategies, executive compensation planning and organisational design, while also overseeing performance management, employee experience initiatives and people analytics programmes.
Before joining Zepto, Muneeb spent nearly three years at Meesho, where he held multiple rewards and HR business partner roles. Earlier in his career, he worked as a senior rewards consultant at Mercer, advising high-tech clients on compensation benchmarking, pay structures and talent-focused reward frameworks.
He began his hr journey at Cognizant, where he supported compensation programmes for nearly two lakh employees across India and worked on m&a compensation alignment and skill-based pay initiatives. Prior to moving into HR, Muneeb started his career as a software engineer at Netcracker, bringing a technical grounding to his people strategy work.
With a mix of consulting rigour, start-up agility and enterprise-scale experience, Muneeb’s elevation signals Zepto’s continued focus on building robust people systems as it races towards its next phase of growth.
Brands
Dell names Aishwarya Sudhakar director of marketing intelligence
INDIA: Dell Technologies is doubling down on artificial intelligence in marketing. The company has elevated Aishwarya Sudhakar to director of marketing measures and intelligence engineering, tasking her with building an enterprise-wide framework for AI-led measurement and customer intelligence.
In the role, Sudhakar will oversee unified data strategy, advanced modelling and context engineering: areas increasingly central to how large technology firms link marketing performance to business outcomes. Her remit includes shaping scalable systems that support Dell’s next phase of AI deployment across marketing functions.
Sudhakar steps into the position after holding a series of senior roles at Dell, including AI lead for marketing orchestration, senior manager, and senior data scientist in customer insights. Across these roles, she led global teams working on large-scale machine learning models, data pipelines and customer analytics.
Before joining Dell, she began her career at Tata Consultancy Services as a systems engineer and later founded Oclor, a shopping discovery start-up, where she built end-to-end technology platforms. The combination of enterprise-scale data work and entrepreneurial experience has shaped her focus on product-led, engineering-first innovation.
As technology companies seek sharper attribution and intelligence in an AI-saturated market, Dell’s move underscores the growing importance of marketing measurement as an engineering discipline rather than a reporting function.
Brands
Gaurav Pathak returns to Adidas in key accounts leadership role
GURUGRAM: Adidas has appointed Gaurav Pathak as director of key and field accounts, bringing back an executive who began his leadership career at the company.
In the role, Pathak will be responsible for deepening strategic partnerships and expanding key, field and export accounts, with a mandate to accelerate growth across the Indian market. The appointment marks a return to Adidas after nearly a decade across premium retail and footwear brands.
Pathak most recently served as head of retail and business development at Ecco, where he focused on partner-led growth, market risk mitigation and operational scale. Before that, he spent eight years at House of Anita Dongre Limited, rising to general manager and leading regional operations across western and southern India.
His earlier career includes a stint as regional sales manager for Karnataka at United Colors of Benetton India and a six-year run at Adidas, where he held sales leadership roles.
With competition intensifying in India’s lifestyle and footwear market, Pathak’s brief will centre on strengthening field execution while aligning large accounts with Adidas’s broader commercial priorities.
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