Adityan Kayalakal

Adityan is a seasoned marketing professional with over 15 years of experience across traditional and digital media and communication. He has been a specialist at launching brands for a large part of this time having worked on launches for brands ranging from Jio, Mercedes-Benz, Hasbro, Tata Cliq, Tata Motors, Lodha, Parle Agro, Skoda, Jeep, Anheuser-Busch InBev to name a few.

The work he’s done across these and other brands has won him over two dozen honours local and global and has got him listed in 30 under 30 and 40 under 40 marketing lists in the past.

Prior to this, he was at the NBA where he was the lead for content and distribution partnerships. He led the licensing of NBA rights to Star India and then most recently to Viacom18. He also licensed the NBA 2K League (esports) rights to Loco through 2 cycles, created their first digital weekly basketball analysis show, led the rollout of their first branded content property (which won 2 Promax awards) and signed a partnership with the national broadcaster for non-live content.

He is currently part of the global brand team at BYJU’S where he heads social media, digital brand marketing and brand partnerships across geographies. His focus is to build the brand’s personality and build brand love on digital platforms.

Let me know if you need this to be shorter or longer or need a different perspective. Can provide it accordingly.

Amit Sethiya

A marketing strategist with a penchant for creating and establishing regional and PAN India brands across segments like Steel, Real estate and consumer electronics segments over the last 15 years. He has a passion towards influencing customers mindset across national and international markets by being a creative and business choir for generating optimal brand equity using traditional and digital media. Radio Jockeying, writing, travelling and teaching are the other interests on the personal front that primes up skill sets pertaining to customer understanding, story-telling, project planning, team handling and training etc eventually adding up to the functional efficacies.

Anil Kumar Singh

Anil Kumar Singh comes with more than 19 years of experience in digital advertising.
He had worked on more than 100 Brands with experience in multiple categories. India’s most awarded SEO expert with experience in online training & conducting the workshop. Professional SEO speaker
He is an SEO mentor, Blogger, Guest Author, Writer, Speaker, and visiting faculty in Business Schools
He had also worked in a variety industry, including the mobile sector, FMCG, finance, e-commerce, real estate, technology, and health industries. Experience working with Indian & Global companies.
Currently, he is working with HT Media where he Oversees all SEO efforts for the HT Group’s asset portfolio (hindustantimes.com, livemint.com, livehindustan.com, and more)
Lead SEO content strategy across all HT Group assets, collaborating with editors on editorial strategy.
Identify market opportunities to increase organic search traffic, then develop ways to capitalise on those prospects.
Assist Product and Engineering teams in identifying and prioritising website optimizations, landing page builds, and testing roadmaps, among other things.

Models of income potential are used to identify priority efforts. Regularly monitor critical SEO KPIs and develop and submit reports
His last organization was NEO Media World as a National Director of SEO. There he was Accountable for the agency’s SEO and content vision and managing the growth of the product by overseeing the SEO Leads. He has setup SEO Practice & business for Pan India.

He worked with Interactive avenues as an India Head of SEO, Digital arm of IPG Mediabrands . He had built an SEO team & business from scratch and stabilized IA into a leader in SEO for the Indian market. Anil helped Interactive Avenues SEO Business reach scale in less than 3 years.

Ankoor Dasguupta

A Digital immigrant, driven by passion, Ankoor believes in the power of Energy and Energize while bringing to the table a pedigree of 22 years across the spectrum of media – print, digital , mobile, event productions , some successful marquee pilot projects. Having worked across multiple functions – ad operations, business operations, content, strategy, sales, event design, media planning & buying, Ankoor has also learnt from the experience of having worked in different cultures and set-ups in national and international environments along with working at cross-functional roles. Ankoor is working with the vibrant and wonderful team at Arm Worldwide and driving the Content Marketing vertical.

Archana Aggarwal

Archana Aggarwal is a passionate marketeer with 20+ years of experience. She is responsible for some critical and strategic areas such as media planning and buying, analytics, digital capability building, performance management of the media agencies, etc. Prior to Airtel, she was Country Media Manager for P&G, India. She was instrumental in P&G winning their first Cannes in India in 2006 post which they won many prestigious international awards for the Gillette Shave India Movement. She also led media for the high decibel launch of 4G and Payments Bank in India.

Archana Tiwari Nayudu

Archana works at the intersection of creative storytelling, integrated communications and marketing along with project management. A journalist & storyteller at heart with a keen sense of what makes compelling stories along with data driven approach, her experience spans across print, television, digital content, on-ground events & marketing comms.

Archana is an entrepreneurial and creative leader with 18+ years of experience across multiple functions & sectors and has been honoured with ‘Woman of Excellence Award’ 2020-21 by Indian Achievers Forum. She was also invited by Rashtrapati Bhavan to curate and host Global Innovation Summit as a part of Festival of Innovation at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

She has always chased challenges and learnings in her career. The agile and ‘learning always on’ attitude towards life and livelihood has helped her transcend the boundaries of media and content roles with brands including upGrad, CNBC TV 18, The Economic Times, Network 18 Publishing, MoneyControl.com. She is presently working as Principal Director – Marketing & Communications at LTI (Larsen & Tubro Infotech)

Ashish Tiwari

Ashish is a marketing professional with over 16 years of experience into various verticals of marketing. He currently heads the Digital Marketing function for Hero Motors Group which includes companies like, Hero Cycles, Firefox Bikes, Hero Motors, BSH (Srilanka), Avocet Sports (UK), Munjal Kiriu, Hero ZFH, Hero Global Design Centre (Manchester), Munjal Hospitality & lifestyle chain OMA.
During the career span of 16+ years, he had worked for brands like Nokia, eBay, General Motors, HCL, Vodafone, Jubilant and extensively trained on consumer/trade/B2B marketing/ Analytics. He has handled assignments of Digital Marketing, Consumer Insights, Data Analytics, CRM, ecommerce, product management, pricing, placement, consumer promotion, brand launch, brand management, events, incentive schemes, PR management, trade promotions, branding & visibility planning to name a few.
Ashish is decently tech savvy in amalgamation of various platforms (mobile/web/voice) & technologies and the usage of data mining & visualisation software’s like Tableau apart of advance excel.
Ashish is a music buff besides being an avid reader, and loves to cycle around in his free time

Balaji Vaidyanathan

Balaji is an integrated marketing communication professional with over 16 years of extensive experience in building brands for both global and Indian companies.

In his current role as Marketing Director, CEEMEA for Franklin Templeton, Balaji is responsible for marketing strategy and building brand SOV for the CEEMEA region. The region covers over 20 countries across Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa and focuses both on institutional and retail businesses.

Prior to this role, Balaji was Deputy Head – Marketing for Franklin Templeton India and was responsible for leading all key brand initiatives. Balaji has been one of the early adopters of leveraging gamification, video content and storytelling in the mutual fund industry to promote investor education in the online space. His deep understanding of consumer marketing and customer lifecycle journeys have won him multiple awards in India and globally across creativity, content, innovation and effectiveness. Very recently, he was conferred with the citation of “Marketing Influencer of the Year” by DMA Asia at the 2018 DMA Asia Echo Awards.

Binda Dey

Imran Qadri

Imran Qadri heads Marketing & PR for the iconic Harley-Davidson brand in Asia Emerging Markets & India region. He is based out of Bangkok, Thailand. He has been associated with Harley-Davidson since April 2019. Apart from India, he oversees Marketing for Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore), South Korea, Taiwan & Hong Kong as well. He has 14 years of Marketing work experience with brands like Hero Honda, Hero MotoCorp, Nissan & H-D. He has donned several hats in his past roles ranging from Marketing Communications, Brand Management, Product Marketing, Category Management, Media Planning & Regional Marketing. He has led teams and agencies deliver with award winning campaigns, launches & content. Recently he was adjudged among Top 40 Nationwide Experts declared by Business Mint for 2022. He was also part of Top 50 Marketing and Communication Leaders in India in 2021 as adjudged by White Page International and among Top 100 in Asia for 2022. He was one of the Social Samosa Top 40 Marketers for the batch of 2019-20 and among Top 25 Content Disruptors in India in 2020 declared by Vidsaga.com. He has been a jury member with many credible advertising & communication forums. An MBA in Marketing from FORE School of Management, Delhi, Imran has a B.E. Mechanical degree from MSRIT, Bangalore, apart from executive leadership & digital marketing certifications from Vanderbilt University & IIM Lucknow, respectively. He is a certified Sports car instructor and has a flair for writing.

Jatin Chhikara

An experienced marketer, strategist & creative thinker with over 15 years of multi-faceted experience of working as a brand strategist, advertiser, digital marketer, entrepreneur, project manager and process improver. Jatin has gained hands-on expertise to lead multi-disciplinary projects in digital transformation of brands, brand experiences & marketing strategies.

Mehul Gupta

Mehul Gupta is the young, dynamic Co-Founder & CEO of SoCheers. With both an analytical and a creative mind, he started SoCheers very young, which goes to show his merit and vision as a leader to see a prominent future in this industry and the persistence & passion to follow it through. Apart from growing the company in its capabilities from a small social media marketing agency to a multi-offering
Advertising & Marketing agency, over the last 9 years, he has also been able to maintain SoCheers’ independent status with pride and success, that too in a highly competitive market. The agency has charted a phenomenal growth under Mehul’s leadership, currently working with over 100 brands and having worked with 480+. In 2021-22, the organisation was successful in increasing its overall revenue
by a whopping 65%. Mehul earned an MBA in Technology from NMIMS, Mumbai in 2012. During this period, he interned with
J. Walter Thompson, an advertising agency, where he serviced clients like Mahindra & Mahindra, CEAT Tyres, Lodha Real-estate Group, RPG group, etc.; and another internship with the Reliance Group ADA in their mobile number portability infrastructure team, which was a new addition to the Indian Mobile market back then. He was responsible for driving sales through social media platforms, alliances &
affiliates for Naaptol’s products at his first job at Naaptol.com as a Social Media Manager. Over the last couple of years, Mehul has spent energies in augmenting SoCheers’ creative capabilities by trying to blend crisp storytelling with the relevant and latest digital marketing technologies to build impactful, meaningful campaigns, which have given the agency an edge over the others. Campaigns like
The Family Man Job Hunt (Amazon Prime Video), Mirzapur S2 ‘Purvanchal Ke Samachar’ (Amazon Prime Video), Venom #ChocolatesMissing (Sony Pictures Entertainment India), Nickelodeon #YogaSeHiHoga (Viacom18 Pvt. Ltd.), BreastFeeding Week (MeeMee), etc. have not only gotten insane love from the audience but have also produced definite and bold results for the brands. The efforts put into these projects have also been validated with multiple award wins both on national and international stages.

Nandita Khaire

Coming from a family of Advertising professionals, she has derived her training in advertising from Damodar Warrior, (ex Creative Director JWT) one of the leading creative gurus of Indian Advertising. She managed an advertising agency for more than 25 years and now is a branding and marketing consultant. She is Brand Director at UJA, a global advisory and business consulting firm, where she is responsible for GTM strategies, marketing and branding advisory to international companies coming to India.
Her core competencies lies in developing branding and marketing strategies, design & aesthetics, brand building, having serviced various B2C and B2B brands (process, food, hospitality, wellness, entertainment, manufacturing, retail, real estate, infrastructure etc). She has a special interest in providing branding and marketing strategies to startups and social enterprises.

Piali Dasgupta

Piali Dasgupta is a multi-award winning Marketing and Communications leader. She is
Senior Vice President, Marketing, at Columbia Pacific Communities, India’s largest senior living community operator.

In a career spanning over 15 years, Piali has created a number of award winning marketing campaigns, served on juries, has been on Social Samosa’s Top 40 marketers under 40 list for the year 2019-2020 and has been awarded the CMO Trailblazer by DMA Asia and Voot India’s Best Marketers and Planners 2021.

She has worked across media (The Times of India), e-commerce (Myntra, Amazon), retail (Aditya Birla Fashion Retail) and real estate.

Her core expertise lies in content marketing, storytelling, building brand narratives and strengthening brand positioning through storytelling.

According to her, good content is one that is purposeful, uplifting and has the ability to start conversations and believes that we are long past the age of “vanity content” or content for the sake of content.

Outside of work, she enjoys travelling, is a voracious reader, spends time sketching and is also a strong mental health advocate and has her own mental health podcast, The Mind Podium, doing her bit to remove long standing stigmas around mental illness.

Prasad Pimple

Prasad is a firm believer in the process of ideation – experimentation – learning fast – succeeding faster & scaling up cheap.

A Chemical Engineer from UDCT & MBA from JBIMS, Prasad has 19 years of experience in Digital business, brand & product management, customer acquisition, customer life cycle management, strategy, business planning and research across insurance, telecom, banking and engineering sectors.

Prior to Kotak Life, Prasad has worked in HDFC Life, Tata Docomo, Vodafone, ICICI Bank & Kotak Mahindra Bank.

Priyanka Sehgal

Priyanka Sehgal has over 19 years of experience across TV and digital, with stints in some of the largest media organizations in the country, including Network 18, Times Now and NDTV. With extensive experience across strategy, product, growth, monetization, content, programming and partnerships, she has set up processes, created content and launched channels which still run effectively across organizations. She has overseen primetime programming, created and executed IPs, turned around TV ratings, set up broadcast chains, forayed into regional content and managed P&L responsibility.
Additionally, she has worked with different brands across TV & digital while setting up branded content divisions, which has given her an in-depth understanding of brands and their ethos. Her IP, ‘Power of Shunya’, won a silver at the Goafest Creative Abby’s 2014 and ‘Amazing Indians Awards’ won at the WOW awards for the on-ground event category. Priyanka’s current focus in Network 18 is on scaling up the digital and leading content, strategy, product, and revenue. Priyanka is recognized as an inspiring leader with exceptional creative and commercial discipline, and a unique ability to embrace change and consistently innovate in an industry that is constantly disrupted across content, carriage and consumer tastes.
She was awarded the Women Leadership Achievement Award in 2016 & the Women Super Achiever Award in 2017 at the World Women Leadership Congress. During the time she was overseeing primetime programming, NDTV 24×7 won the Best English News Channel of the year award. She contributed to ET Now dislodging the number 1 channel – CNBC. In her current stint at Network 18, Moneycontrol was awarded the Content Marketeer of the year award at DMAI Awards for a project she led, her recent IP on Firstpost 9 Months qualified as a finalist in the Healthcare & Pharmaceutical Sector at the Indian Marketing Awards.

Rituraj Bidwai

A decade of experience in Marketing and Brand Communication with specialization in Digital.
Astute understanding of various digital marketing channels coupled with solid technical knowledge gives me an edge in implementing brand related campaigns derived from the overall business objectives. Data is an integral part of my work style ensuring a fair balance of execution and result KPIs, important for any strategy to be successful.
The work done during my stint with Godrej won awards by “Asia Retail Congress” and “CMO Asia Brand and Marketing Excellence Awards”.
Relevant areas of core strengths – Digital strategy in Search, Social, Mobile, User Experience on web and mobile, Analytics mapping on Search and Social channels, User journey management, SEM, Online Reputation Management, SEO, eCRM, Media planning and performance marketing.

Saugata Bagchi

Saugata is a digital practitioner with 20+ years of experience in the marketing & digital domain.
As Global Head – Digital & Content, he leads web, social, performance media, marketing automation & comms design practices, delivering brand & business outcomes in sync with the digital behaviour & content consumption habits of the audiences.
Prior to Tata Comms, Saugata was at the helm of digital agencies at Omnicom (DDB) & WPP (GroupM) & loves working across industries – applying new technologies to create future ready marketing solutions.
Outside of work, he is an avid angler & home chef.

Shrishail Deshnur

Shrishail is a marketing professional with over 18 years of experience across categories of consumer products, financial services and pharma.Currently, he heads the consumer marketing function at Cipla and is instrumental in spearheading the company’s largest consumer awareness initiative.In his previous stint, he was heading the marketing function for the stationery business at Pidilite. Earlier in his career, he has worked with Berger paints, ICICI Prudential, MetLife, and Kotak Life.Shrishail is a foodie and a self-proclaimed movie critic. He loves to drive and play cricket with his 9-year-old son during his free time.

Sudhanshu Tripathi

Sudhanshu Tripathi is an entrepreneurial leader who loves to work at the cusp of technology and human impact. In his current role he heads Marketing & ESG at Sterlite Power. His marketing efforts have successfully created global brands and unlocked value through strategic initiatives across startups as well as global matrix organizations.
Through his ESG mandate, he has successfully integrated ESG into the core business processes and is enabling a sustainable brand transformation. He has also led ESG investor due diligences resulting in equity & debt raise of more than $250 million. In past, he has worked with brands like CYIENT, FINO & TCS.

Suman Varma

26+years of experience in partnering brands and businesses in India , with the WPP group in leadership roles – JWT , Rediffusion Y&R.

Experienced leader with a demonstrated history seeking consumer insights that lead in building brands and revenue growth. Known for passion, driving results and galvanizing teams to adapt to changing environments. A powerful communicator and an authentic, supportive leader .Skilled in Brand Management, Advertising, Design ,Market Rsearch and interest in CRM.

Have worked across categories on leading brands both multinational and local :
ITC , Surya Nepal, BAT Srilanka , GSK , Hamdard , Tata Steel , Emami , Big 92.7 FM, Zee TV , Pepsi, Airtel & USL ( Circuit work) , Dr Reddy , Jagatjit Industries, GPI, Tea Board of India, Coffee & Spice Board of India, Amway, IFFCO, Resurgent Rajasthan Summit , Unicef ,Videocon and all local jewellery brands of Bengal. I have worked across markets of India, Nepal, Srilanka, South Africa and Kenya for tobacco and health food products.

I am a member of Cherie Blair Mentor Alumini, , Mentoring in Business Beyond Boundaries programme & W4 and am on the Advisory Board for NGO’s.& work as an Independent Director with the Board of a Retail Jewellery brand, Speaker in many forums on subject related to brands/ advertising marketing/ women issues

Varsha Ojha

Ms. Varsha Ojha is the Head of Marketing and Communications at Shemaroo Entertainment. A multi-disciplinary business and marketing leader, Varsha has around two decades of experience working in the Media & Entertainment industry and helps efficiently drive brand strategy, digital marketing and communication across all media platforms.

Varsha is one of the rare marketing leaders, who believes in the power of creativity in every aspect of business, and not just communication. She has been at the forefront of establishing Radio City and Mid-day as brands to reckon with by conceptualizing the brand positioning – ‘Rag Rag Mein Daude City…FM Bole Toh Radio City’ and ‘Mid-day, Made in Mumbai.’

She has been a leading force in launching the first ever interactive digital tabloid, Mid-day, a one of its kind innovation in the print industry during the pandemic reaching 10 cr readers amidst the pandemic. She played a pivotal role in developing the IPO campaign for Radio City that resulted in the IPO being subscribed over 40 times. Varsha has conceptualised numerous marquee properties as well as trade and consumer marketing campaigns during her stints with leading media houses such as Hindustan Times, Sony TV, Disney and Zoom TV.

Varsha is a recipient of multiple industry accolades for driving innovative marketing campaigns. These include five IRF awards, six Golden Mikes, Promax Gold, and three Limca Book of World Record titles. In her personal time, she likes to travel, play tennis and table-tennis, practice yoga and sing with her 7-year-old.