MUMBAI: Pidilite Industries managing director Sudhanshu Vats has been elected chairman of the Advertising Standards Council of India (Asci) at its 39th annual general meeting, taking charge as the country’s advertising regulator-by-consensus enters its fourth decade.
MullenLowe Global chief strategy officer S Subramanyeswar moves in as vice-chairman, while industry veteran Paritosh Joshi of Provocateur Advisory becomes honorary treasurer.
Founded in 1985 as a voluntary self-regulatory body, Asci is recognised by the Cable TV Act, Doordarshan, All India Radio and several key regulators. Its consumer complaints committee enjoys extraordinary acceptance for a voluntary code: in FY 2024-25, compliance hit 98 per cent for print advertising, 97 per cent for television and 81 per cent for digital. The supreme court has repeatedly cited Asci’s role in consumer protection.
Vats said the council’s job has “never been more important” as advertising mutates with technology and new formats. “Our responsibility is to ensure advertising is executed with integrity—centred on the product promise, respectful of the community and mindful of consumers,” he told members. “Self-regulation provides guidance to the industry and assurance to the public. The simple principle is to keep the consumer’s interest front and centre.”
Outgoing chairman Partha Sinha called his tenure “a comma in a sentence that keeps unfolding”. Over the past years, he said, Asci has “moved from being a watchdog to an enabler of responsible communication—partnering, not just policing,” and stepped “firmly into the digital arena, because responsibility cannot lag behind technology.”
To mark its fortieth year, the council unveiled an ambitious agenda:
* AdWise literacy drive – training more than a million schoolchildren to identify, question and evaluate advertising messages, reducing their vulnerability to misleading or harmful pitches.
* Gen-Alpha research – an ethnographic study of children born into the touchscreen age to craft a framework for responsible advertising to the next generation.
* New city offices – expansion of Asci’s physical footprint to Bengaluru and Delhi to deepen engagement across India.
* Legal knowledge hub – a comprehensive online resource on advertising codes and laws, developed with leading law firm Khaitan & Co.
* Podcast partnerships – a new series with The Logical Indian and Marketing Minds to spread awareness of responsible advertising.
* Visual commitment badge – a mark members can display in their communications and on websites to signal adherence to the Asci code.
Asci’s influence has widened well beyond complaint adjudication. The Asci Academy now drives education and thought leadership through masterclasses for marketers, faculty development programmes in media and advertising colleges, and a pre-production advisory service that helps advertisers check compliance before campaigns go live—avoiding costly post-release fixes.
In recent years the council has published widely cited white papers on dark patterns, artificial intelligence in advertising, the depiction of masculinity and the trust deficit around digital influencers. It has issued pioneering guidelines on influencer conduct, cryptocurrency, green claims and gender stereotyping, earning two global awards for leadership in self-regulation.
Looking ahead, Vats said Asci will “strengthen global partnerships and knowledge exchange with peer bodies worldwide, and invest in research, innovation and frameworks that respond to the realities of digital-first advertising.”
For a voluntary body that began as a modest industry code, the next chapter promises to be anything but quiet.
