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Tag: Airtel

  • TBWA India names Rohit Mukherjee executive creative director in Gurgaon

    TBWA India names Rohit Mukherjee executive creative director in Gurgaon

    MUMBAI: TBWA India has hired Rohit Mukherjee as executive creative director at its Gurgaon office, tasking him with sharpening the agency’s disruption philosophy and raising the creative bar for clients.

    Mukherjee, who brings close to 20 years in advertising, joins from Dentsu Creative Isobar where he rose to group executive creative director, leading integrated, digital-first campaigns for major Indian brands. He began his career with an internship at Rediffusion Y&R and went on to stints at Publicis, Mccann, DDB Mudra and Bates, shaping campaigns for Airtel, Nestlé, Colgate-Palmolive, Dabur, Diageo and Kia Motors. Among his best-known works is Colgate’s “Kya aapke toothpaste mein namak hai?” platform.

    TBWA India, chief creative experience officer, Russell Barrett called Mukherjee “an accomplished creative individual with a great pedigree of ideas and executions,” adding that he was “just the right kind of pirate to lead and inspire the office forward.”

    For his part, Mukherjee said he relished the agency’s disruption credo. “To create in any field, you need to disrupt. The very fact that for tbwa, disruption is its raison d’être is provocation enough for any creative,” he noted.

    Mukherjee’s work has earned recognition at Cannes Lions, Spikes, Kyoorius, Abbys, Effies, New York Festival, Adfest and the Clios. Off duty, he is a collector of stories, whether through photography, trivia or conversations with strangers.
     

  • Kantar Insights & Airtel bag top honour at MRSI’s 33rd research seminar

    Kantar Insights & Airtel bag top honour at MRSI’s 33rd research seminar

    MUMBAI: Held in Mumbai, the event crowned Kantar Insights and Bharti Airtel Ltd as winners for their paper, ‘Reconstructing Bharat: A scientific approach to estimating India’s population demographics at a district level.’ The research tackled the challenge of building a sharper, district-level picture of India’s vast and varied population.

    The runner-up slots went to Knowledge Excel for ‘Guardians of the survey: Fighting fraud to protect research integrity and data quality benchmarking’ and to Zee Entertainment Enterprises with Third Eye Integrated Services for ‘Streaming the paradox: Gen Z and the intergenerational remix.’

    This year’s theme, ‘The Power of And’ attracted over 100 submissions, with 22 shortlisted papers presented on stage.

    The seminar opened with a keynote by Ministry of statistics & programme implementation, secretary, dr Saurabh Garg, who underlined the importance of data-driven policymaking in India’s journey towards Viksit Bharat. He highlighted innovations in AI, machine learning, and geospatial data as tools that are strengthening decision-making.

    Panels through the day kept conversations lively, from the ‘Joys and dilemmas of insight in the age of technology’ to candid discussions on how brands can authentically connect with India’s cultural and economic diversity.

    MRSI, president, Nitin Kamat set the tone and said, “The industry must embrace integration between technology and creativity, data and human stories, clients and agencies to shape the future of market research.”

    Committee chair Rituparna Dasgupta added, “The diversity of ideas, from academic breakthroughs to brand case studies, reflects the ambition of India’s insights industry.”

    With thought leaders from healthcare, hospitality, FMCG, and media in attendance, the seminar reinforced MRSI’s role as the beating heart of India’s research ecosystem and a champion of ethical, future-ready insights.

     

  • MRSI puts the power of ‘and’ at centre of 33rd annual seminar

    MRSI puts the power of ‘and’ at centre of 33rd annual seminar

    MUMBAI: The Market Research Society of India (MRSI) is set to bring fresh energy to Gurugram this month, with its 33rd annual market research seminar promising a heady mix of data, ideas and debate under the banner “The Power of And”.

    Dr Saurabh Garg, secretary at the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, will deliver the opening keynote on “Driving impact through data insights: harnessing public-private synergies for a Viksit Bharat at 2047”. His address will anchor two days of panels, papers and provocations at The Leela Ambience on 11–12 September.

    The line-up features Karthik Nagarajan of Hogarth, Aradhana Lal of Lemon Tree Hotels and Aditya Kasyap of Unilever, alongside sessions on navigating “many Indias” and a panel on the “joys and dilemmas of insight in the age of technology” with senior voices from HUL, Nestlé, Airtel, Kantar, Smytten and more.

    This year drew over 100 research paper submissions, with 22 shortlisted across four themes: bending and breaking methodologies, innovating at the edges, technology as an intersection, and the human mosaic of future leaders.

    “The seminar has long been the cornerstone of India’s research and insights industry,” said Rituparna Dasgupta, chairperson of the 33rd edition and EVP at Zee entertainment. “This year’s theme captures how our world is being shaped.”

    With Smytten Pulse AI as lead partner and heavyweights such as Kantar, Nestlé, ITC and Hindustan Unilever backing sessions, MRSI is positioning its flagship gathering as more than a talking shop.
     

  • Music licensing firm Broma 16 taps Indian veteran to crack subcontinent gold rush

    Music licensing firm Broma 16 taps Indian veteran to crack subcontinent gold rush

    MUMBAI: Broma 16, a Dutch music licensing outfit, has hired Sunnyy Vyas from India’s streaming wars to spearhead its assault on the subcontinent’s booming digital music market. The Amsterdam-based firm, which specialises in maximising royalty collections online, appointed Vyas as head of India as it seeks to capitalise on the country’s explosive streaming growth.

    Vyas arrives with battle scars from 19 years in India’s cutthroat music and broadcasting industry. Most recently, he served as head of Wynk Studio at Airtel Digital, where he shepherded community engagement and podcast distribution for the telecom giant’s music platform. Before that, he led music promotions for ByteDance’s original content push and founded Music Plus, billed as India’s first dedicated music business portal.

    The appointment comes as international music companies scramble for a slice of India’s digital pie. With smartphone penetration soaring and data costs plummeting, the country has become a critical battleground for streaming supremacy.

    Vyas cut his teeth in traditional radio, working his way up from radio jockey at Radio City to cluster manager at Radio One, where he managed celebrity campaigns across four cities. His early career included stints as programming head at 94.3 MY FM in Nagpur, where he helmed an eight-strong team and chased ratings gold.
    The new hire will debut Broma 16’s Indian ambitions at All About Music in Mumbai later this month, where the company’s team will court potential partners and clients. For a firm with just 11 to 50 employees, landing a market veteran of Vyas’s calibre signals serious intent in a region where rights management remains fragmented and undermonetised.

    Whether Broma 16 can navigate India’s labyrinthine music licensing landscape remains to be seen, but with Vyas at the helm, it has secured a guide who knows where the bodies are buried.

  • India adds 2.7 million new telecom users in July, led by Jio

    India adds 2.7 million new telecom users in July, led by Jio

    MUMBAI: India’s telecom dial tone got a bit louder this July, as the country added a net 2.7 million new telephone connections, taking the total subscriber base to 1,180.87 million, according to TRAI’s latest figures. That’s a ring in the right direction especially with wireless connections doing the heavy lifting. Wireless subscriptions grew by 2.74 million, pushing the total to 1,172.57 million. On the other hand, wireline subscriptions held relatively steady, dipping slightly by 7,747 users, ending the month at 8.29 million.

    The urban-rural divide saw rural India catching up, with rural wireless users increasing to 526.27 million while urban counterparts stood at 646.30 million. Urban tele-density saw a slight decline to 126.62 per cent, while rural tele-density edged up to 58.66 per cent as reported by TRAI.

    Jio continued to be the star caller in town, adding a whopping 3.16 million wireless subscribers, cementing its lead with 458.95 million users. Bharti Airtel held strong in second with 383.57 million, gaining 1.11 million subscribers. Vodafone Idea continued its slow slide, losing 1.32 million subscribers, taking its count to 218.49 million.

    But not all subscribers are equal when it comes to active users, Jio again leads with a 104.08 per cent VLR (visitor location register), indicating some dual SIM overlap. Airtel boasted a healthy 99.21 per cent active base, while Vi clocked in at 87.17 per cent. BSNL trailed behind with only 50.64 per cent of its users actively using services.

    On the MNP (mobile number portability) front, Indians are still keeping their digits mobile with 12.94 million requests in July alone, bringing the all-time total to a staggering 921.94 million.

    In the wireline game, Jio added 0.25 million subscribers, now holding 33.11 per cent market share, while BSNL shed 0.20 million, dropping to 23.03 per cent. Airtel’s steady ship saw it maintain a 22.97 per cent slice.

    Meanwhile, broadband connections both wired and wireless stood strong at 940.52 million, led by Reliance Jio (487.59 million), Airtel (264.33 million), and Vodafone Idea (125.08 million).

    So, while some telcos may be dropping calls and customers India’s telecom sector as a whole is still very much in signal, especially as it tunes into deeper rural penetration and data-led digital expansion.

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  • Dimple Kaul named director – publications at Indica

    Dimple Kaul named director – publications at Indica

    MUMBAI: Dimple Kaul has stepped into the role of director – publications at Indica  bringing her decades-long journey across media, telecom, education and cultural advocacy to the fore. A polymath with a penchant for poetry and Indic wisdom, Kaul will now helm Indica’s publishing output—spanning philosophy, fiction, poetry, and academic texts, all grounded in India’s civilisational knowledge systems.

    Previously, as director – academic programmes, Kaul was instrumental in building Indica Courses from scratch. Under her leadership, the platform ran over 140 live courses across disciplines such as Vedanta, Ayurveda, classical arts, and more—connecting seekers and scholars in a digitally native, yet deeply traditional, learning environment.

    With a career spanning Idea Cellular, Airtel, Nuance Communications and a host of cultural and human rights initiatives, Kaul has consistently bridged modern systems with ancient frameworks. She has worn many hats: marketer, coach, strategist, activist, poet. Her passion for cultural continuity has found voice in books, film festivals, policy dialogues, and even podcasting.

    At Indica, she is expected to elevate the publishing vertical into a flagship intellectual property, one that reflects both the depth and dynamism of Indian knowledge systems. Her appointment signals a continued push towards reimagining Indic scholarship—not as nostalgia, but as a toolkit for today.

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  • India adds 3.2 million phone users in May, total hits 1.2 billion

    India adds 3.2 million phone users in May, total hits 1.2 billion

    MUMBAI: Dialling up its digital growth, India’s telecom sector added 3.24 million new telephone subscribers in May 2025, pushing the country’s total subscriber base to a staggering 1.207 billion. While urban India remained saturated with 131.76 per cent tele-density, rural areas rang in gains too, growing 0.14 per cent month-on-month to hit 537.39 million subscribers.

    The data, released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), also showed a strong wireline comeback with 1.25 million new connections pushing wireline growth to 3.34 per cent, led by aggressive additions from Jio and Airtel.

    India’s broadband base surged 3.37 per cent to reach 974.87 million subscribers, thanks largely to mobile broadband (up 2.92 per cent) and a 60 per cent spike in fixed wireless (5G FWA, Wi-Fi, satellite) subscriptions. However, 5G FWA itself dipped slightly from 7.50 million to 7.40 million users, indicating early volatility in the still-nascent category.

    Jio led the broadband brigade with 494.47 million subscribers, followed by Airtel (302.15 million) and Vodafone Idea (126.68 million), together accounting for a whopping 98.47 per cent of the market.

    Overall wireless subscriptions grew modestly by 0.17 per cent to 1.168 billion, with rural India contributing 0.38 million new users. Urban wireless teledensity climbed to 124.91 per cent, while rural teledensity inched up to 58.90 per cent. Wireline adoption in rural India saw a sharper surge of 10.44 per cent, albeit from a much smaller base.
    Who’s Winning the Race?

    .  Reliance Jio: 494.47 million broadband subs, 40.92 per cent mobile market share.

    .  Bharti Airtel: 302.15 million broadband subs, 33.61 per cent mobile market share.

    . Vodafone Idea: 126.68 million broadband subs, 17.61 per cent mobile market share.

    Jio also led wireline subscriber additions with 1.28 million new connections, while Vodafone Idea continued to see a decline of over 1.35 lakh users in the wireline segment.

    Indians are clearly still keen to keep their digits. 14.03 million MNP requests were made in May alone. Uttar Pradesh (East) topped the chart with 115.77 million cumulative porting requests, followed by Maharashtra at 92.72 million.

    Out of the total 1.161 billion mobile subscribers, 1.08 billion were active as per VLR (Visitor Location Register) data about 93 per cent. BSNL had the lowest active subscriber rate (63.73 per cent), while Reliance Communications registered a perfect 100 per cent, albeit on a very small base.

    With over 85.36per cent teledensity nationwide and close to a billion broadband users, India’s telecom story continues to evolve rapidly. But the future lies beyond just numbers, rural wireline expansion, M2M growth (now at 73.91 million connections), and the true test of 5G fixed wireless adoption could be the next chapters in this digital saga.

    So, whether it’s smartphones in metros or landlines in tier-3 towns, India’s telecom tune is still playing and the country’s clearly not hanging up any time soon.

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  • Airtel goes big on blocking fraud with OOH blitz

    Airtel goes big on blocking fraud with OOH blitz

    MUMBAI: Airtel is taking its scam-stopping game to the streets — quite literally. Partnering with dentsu India’s out-of-home (OOH) specialist Posterscope, the telecom giant has rolled out a clever and quick-fire OOH campaign to promote ‘SPAM 2.0’, the next phase in its Safe Network proposition, featuring real-time detection and blocking of fraudulent links.

    The campaign’s hero message is ‘Blocking fraud links’. And that promise popped up across everything from metro stations to mall façades, transit hubs, bus shelters and even parking barricades — with witty, hyperlocal lines in regional languages that caught eyes and sparked smiles. Think: ‘Ye gate to khulega, par Airtel pe fraud link nahi khulega.’

    Spread across top metro cities and key markets, the campaign cleverly hit high-traffic zones where users are most vulnerable to distraction — while reinforcing Airtel’s positioning as the nation’s digital watchdog.

    Posterscope’s turnaround was just as slick, the nationwide campaign was planned, produced and executed in under four days. The strategic mix of formats and real-time contextual placements ensured that Airtel’s safety-first message landed when and where it mattered most.

    Posterscope India CEO Imtiyaz Vilatra said, “This campaign perfectly balances innovation with purpose. We translated Airtel’s powerful tech solution into a creative narrative that felt personal and timely. Through hyperlocal execution and speed, we were able to capture attention and build trust, a testament to how OOH can truly drive social impact when done right.”

    SPAM 2.0 isn’t just another tech update — it’s a public service with punchlines, and proof that when safety goes OOH, trust comes home.

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  • Sunil Raina calls the shots as new managing director at Lava International

    Sunil Raina calls the shots as new managing director at Lava International

    MUMBAI:  Sunil Raina has officially taken the reins as managing director at Lava International, stepping into the hot seat after a stellar 15-year rise through the ranks at the homegrown mobile brand.

    From leading marketing at Xolo to steering strategy as president and business head, and most recently serving as executive director, Raina has been the driving force behind Lava’s brand identity, market expansion, and product innovation over the years.

    His journey with the company began in 2010 as chief marketing officer, and since then, he’s been pivotal in Lava’s evolution from an emerging player to a Make in India torchbearer.

    With earlier stints at Telenor, Reliance Communications, Airtel, and Tata Teleservices, Raina’s telecom roots run deep. His marketing chops and GTM savvy are expected to play a key role as Lava navigates India’s fiercely competitive smartphone battleground.

    Industry insiders say Raina’s elevation signals a renewed push for domestic dominance and global ambition, as the brand looks to consolidate its positioning against Chinese rivals and double down on manufacturing, design, and distribution.

    As the handset wars heat up, all eyes are on how Lava’s homegrown hero plans to dial up growth—and ring in a fresh era of desi disruption.

  • Chirag Alawadhi takes the leap from agency life to advisory heights

    Chirag Alawadhi takes the leap from agency life to advisory heights

    MUMBAI: From pitch decks to knowledge stacks Chirag Alawadhi is switching gears, not goodbye notes. After nearly a decade in the trenches of digital marketing, Chirag Alawadhi has stepped down as co-founder and CEO of The Leapfrog Network, closing a chapter that began in December 2021. But don’t expect another agency launch. Instead, Alawadhi is taking a wider lens approach diving into content ecosystems, strategic consulting, and marketing tech for a new generation of brands and builders.

    Alawadhi announced his decision on LinkedIn, marking the end of a journey that started as a solo founder and scaled into a full-fledged creative agency. “After 9 years of building businesses, I’m now focused on building the infrastructure and knowledge systems that will empower the next generation of marketers and entrepreneurs,” he wrote.

    His résumé reads like a digital marketer’s highlight reel: 1,300 campaigns delivered, over 7 million dollars in revenue generated, and content networks reaching more than 10 million followers. Along the way, he’s partnered with marquee names like Emami, Lenskart, Airtel, Reliance, OTT Play, and Tata Motors.

    What started with basic tools and delayed wins evolved into an agency known for bold campaigns and real community engagement. “This isn’t goodbye to the industry that shaped me, it’s a shift toward deeper impact,” Alawadhi said, reflecting on his departure as a move away from operations and towards enabling transformation at scale.

    His exit also mirrors a growing trend among agency veterans: trading day-to-day grind for advisory and ecosystem-building roles. Alawadhi joins a cohort of leaders looking beyond billing cycles and into future-facing industry infrastructure.

    Under his leadership, The Leapfrog Network carved out a niche in storytelling and strategy. While Alawadhi steps away, the agency rooted in its founding mission to create meaningful brand connections is poised for its next phase under fresh leadership.

    As for Alawadhi? He’s taking the leap again only this time, it’s beyond the agency playbook.