Speakers

Avi Kumar
CMO, igp.com

Avi Kumar is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Join Ventures. He leads global marketing for Join Ventures and its portfolio companies - IGP.com, IGP for Business and Interflora India.

Recognized among the Top 30 CMOs by IAMAI, Kumar brings over a decade’s experience in online business and marketing leadership roles to Join Ventures. He is a digital eclectic recognized for converting data to consumer insights to market strategy for growth and has built large brands in the Tech, Content and CPG space. As the Head of SVOD and Brand Marketing for India's leading OTT platform, ZEE5, he was responsible for the growth of D2C and B2B business through a host of multimedia campaigns and industry first innovations to establish the brand as the streaming platform of choice for millions of consumers in a short span of 3 years. Prior to ZEE5, Avi has led the marketing for India's largest radio brand Big FM and was instrumental in the growth of Oriflame in India.

Pundi S Sriram
Chief Product Officer, The Hindu Group

Professional experience

Mr. Sriram is focused on creating high-impact digital products across the education, skill development and media sectors. He is currently responsible for The Hindu Group’s digital news properties – The Hindu, BusinessLine, Frontline and Sportstar – as well as the group’s first venture into the education sector, STEP. STEP is focused on testing and training Indian youth in the English language.

His earlier entrepreneurial ventures in the education sector include promoting deep learning of Mathematics and Science among high school students, bringing international experiential learning programs to Indian students and preparing high achieving Indian students for universities abroad.

Prior to this venture, he had over 10 years of experience advising Fortune 500 companies in India and the US on corporate strategy.

Professional qualifications

Mr. Sriram completed his undergraduate studies in Mechanical Engineering in 1999 at the University of Madras. He received his Master of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2000, where he was also a Fellow of the Tauber Institute of Global Operations.

Lucky Saini
VP & Head of Brand, Meesho

Lucky Saini is the VP & Head of Brand at Meesho. He began his journey with Meesho in 2021. In his current role, he oversees and undertakes the responsibility of brand building and communications at Meesho. Lucky’s in-depth experience in the areas of brand management and marketing strategy experience has contributed immensely to Meesho’s accelerated growth over the past few years. Prior to his current role, Lucky held leadership positions at Vedantu, Dentsu, and Flipkart.

Abhinav Vadrevu
Senior Director – Marketing, Rupeek

An expert at modern-day brand building leveraging behavioural insights with technology, Abhinav Vadrevu is Senior Director, Marketing at Rupeek. With over 10+ years of experience, he has donned multiple hats at Rupeek, overseeing its growth from INR 1.5 cr monthly to INR 600 cr company per month.

He was previously with Porter, driving its institutional business development, and was also part of ITC as a quality and training manager. His experience has enabled him to gain a deep insight-led approach to creating a brand from scratch. He has helped set up a full stack marketing team, developing GTM models & ultimately, turbo-charging growth by manifold at Rupeek.

Abhinav enjoys reading and swimming in his free time and has completed B.Tech in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from IIT-Guwahati. He firmly believes in the principle ‘When you fall in love with the problem, the solution presents itself.’

Chandru Kalro
Managing Director, TTK Prestige

He began his journey with front-line sales of test and measuring instruments and office automation at BPL Limited. Recognized early for his talent, he was promoted to a national role in a mere four years, and went on to then market Audio systems for BPL.

His journey at TTK Prestige began in 1993 as product manager, where he was recognised and a high potential manager and grew to General manager marketing in two years His work here was inspired by his biggest passion in life – cooking. Turning his kitchen at home into an experimentative lab, he played a key role in several strategic initiatives and innovations at TTK Prestige.

He was always happy to take on higher responsibility and this particularly was handy when the company was in trouble and turned loss making in 2003. He formulated a high growth strategy, challenging every norm and played a key role in envisioning and transforming the company to where it is today. Today TTK Prestige has grown from 113 crores top line in 2003 to over 2500 crores in FY 22. It also moved from being loss making in 2003 to India’s most profitable company in the industry. The brand is extremely strong today and is the most trusted brand for kitchen appliances in the country.

He was promoted to becoming the managing director in 2015 and the company has continued to grow at a blistering pace.

Since then the company has acquired homewares in UK, made another strategic investment recently in Ultrafresh modular solutions in India as well.

He has won several accolades in his journey Supers with logos:

Pride of Karnataka in Marketing | India’s top 50 most talented CMOs | Thought Leadership in Marketing | Corporate Leadership award | Great Leadership by WCRC International | India’s Best Trusted CEO in kitchen appliances | CEO of the year, World Leadership Awards | 5. TTK Prestige is a certified 'Great Place to Work®’ February 2022 until February 2023

He hopes to leave behind a legacy of sustainable success, continuing the win win culture of the company.

PG Aditiya
Co-founder and CCO, Talented

PG Aditiya is the co-founder and CCO of Talented, a 7 month old independent creative agency. He was the CCO of Dentsu Webchutney until February this year. PG’s idea, the Unfiltered History Tour for VICE World News, led India’s tally in what is now the country’s most successful year at Cannes Lions. Making it India’s most awarded campaign in Cannes Lions - ever. His team of 100+ people executed the project over 18 months of the pandemic, coordinating remotely with contributors across 10 countries. Bringing home three Grand Prix, a Titanium Lion and for the first-time: the coveted Agency of the Year title & placing VICE as No. 2 in Creative Marketer of the Year, ahead of Apple and as a runner-up to Burger King. PG was also recognised as APAC's #1 CCO by the One Show earlier this year.

Gunnidhi Singh Sareen
VP - Marketing, Head Digital Works

Gunnidhi Singh Sareen, VP-Marketing has two decades of impressive experience across marketing and sales in the telecommunications space. He was the marketing head for Airtel (WB and Kolkata circle) where he was instrumental in gaining mobile revenue market share for four consecutive years. He also led Airtel’s national broadband growth story as Head of Marketing through extensive digital, offline & GTM marketing efforts. At HDW, he is responsible for overseeing the company’s acquisition and retention efforts, enabling A23 to expand its user base and optimise revenue accretive retention strategies. He has a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics from YCCE, Nagpur along with an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Kartikeya Bhandari
CMO, Livspace

Kartikeya is the Chief Marketing Officer at Livspace. Having handled brand marketing for Flipkart and Nokia in the past, Kartikeya spearheads key functions of Marketing, Public Relations, and Retail, which includes brand, advertising, digital, content, research, and strategic alliances at Livspace. His teams are collectively responsible for demand generation and strengthening brand equity. Kartik’s able guidance to craft impactful marketing strategies played a critical role to pivot Livspace’s positioning to greater heights. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, Kartik drives business results for Livspace including customer insights thereby creating improved consumer awareness and advocacy for the brand.

Venkatesh Vijayaraghavan
CEO & Director, Cavinkare

Professional credentials

Venkatesh, fondly known as Venky, currently serves CavinKare as CEO & Director. In addition to driving growth, building a strong leadership team across various FMCG businesses in the group , Venky also serves as a director on the board of the CavinKare group .The CavinKare group operates across FMCG & Retail verticals . With a cumulative experience of over 26 years, Venky joined Cavinkare in April 2018 after an exciting, extensive leadership stint of almost 20 years in telecom industry. Prior to joining CavinKare, Venky was with Airtel. A long timer in Airtel, Venky has served in varied roles across strategy, operations. Earlier on in his career, Venky has worked with Reliance Industries, Escotel Mobile communications.

Mentorship credentials

He also has an active interest in the startup eco system and has been making small angel investments & mentoring new economy startups. He has made investments in around 7-10 startups so far.

He is also an advisor on the board of one of the management programs offered by TAPMI.

Educational credentials

A Chemical Engineer from Anna University, Chennai, Venky has done his PGDMM from Times School of Marketing, Delhi. He has also completed Executive Management Programs from Tepper School of Management, Carnegie Mellon University and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Venkatesh is a proud recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship awarded by Board of Education & Cultural Affairs, USA.

Hobbies

Personally, an avid reader and a marathoner, Venky loves traveling. Having travelled across the globe and lived across almost 8 cities across India in last 25 years, he counts this as a priceless experience of living / traveling amidst varied cultures & people.

Vanda Ferrao
Head of Marketing, FreshToHome Foods

As the Head of Marketing at FreshToHome, Vanda is fueling growth by creating a strong brand image and building relevance for consumers to buy online. Vanda has worked as a marketing leader for established organizations as well as startups including Lindt Switzerland, Britannia, and Licious. She has also driven growth from large national brands like GoodDay, Tiger, and NutriChoice and worked ground up at startups.

Vanda possesses a coveted mix of core FMCG skills and growth hacking expertise for scaling D2C startups. With a total experience of over 16 years, she is currently enjoying the challenge to revamp FreshToHome since the meat and seafood category remains largely unorganized.

A strong believer in gender equality and diversity, Vanda has been on the CIIs panel on women empowerment at the workplace.

Vanda has shared her insights on topics such as branding, user growth, retention, innovation, and category building.

Althea Vanderveen
Director, South- Ad sales, Truecaller

A Media Evangelist who's worked with brands & partners for 17 years. My journey started on a marketing back with Redbull and then Media came calling. Network 18(Web 18) was my launching pad into the media space and from then on there was no turning back. Opening up my Global play, BBC gave me my solutioning boost introducing TV to my media mix. Now throw in some sporty brands with ESPN and this further moved my professional needle. Now a proud Truecaller-ite leading Ad Solutions for the Southern Indian Region. Culture, Creativity and Collaboration are what I'm known for, Relationships, Reason & Relaxation is what I live by.

Saibal Biswas
Head of Marketing, Partnerships and PR, MediBuddy

An accomplished professional with more than 16+ years of experience in consumer marketing, digital & business leadership; Saibal Biswas currently serves as the Head of Marketing, Partnerships & Public Relations at MediBuddy. Prior to this, he was the Vice President & Head of Marketing at Hopscotch. Saibal commenced his career with Godrej Consumer Products and has since worked in marketing and business capacities for distinguished companies such as Disney+Hotstar, Amazon India, Cavinkare, and Philips India Ltd.

During his tenure at Disney+Hotstar, he was in charge of marketing, growth & international markets for Hotstar Global Business. He was instrumental in doubling the revenue & subscription base for Hotstar International’s subscription business. For Amazon India, Biswas played a key role in expanding the market share of Amazon's key products such as the Kindle, Fire TV, and Echo & drove marketing initiatives on category creation, brand building & new customer acquisition. He conceptualized & executed Amazon unified fixtures for enhanced Amazon Brand Experience, as well as modular fixtures for Amazon Kiosk stores to drive Amazon Devices Offline presence in malls and premium retail stores across India.

Saibal is B-tech in Information Technology(IT) from IIITA & MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta.

Yatin Balyan
Managing Partner, National Head of Media Investment, Omnicom Media Group India

Yatin Balyan is the Managing Partner, National Head of Media Investment at Omnicom Media Group India. Armed with 18+ years of experience in Media Planning and Investments, he is a seasoned media professional with a holistic approach to planning and investments, understanding consumer sentiment and curating best-in-class solutions for clients. An ace networker with an old hand in cultivating partnerships for business growth, his expertise lies in fostering strong relationships with partners & clients and a keen understanding of opportunities and needs of the ever-evolving media landscape.

Yatin started his career with Mudra, Ahmedabad, as a media planner before moving to Mumbai to Mediacom to drive media planning and buying for one of its key clients. Following this, he has led media planning roles across ZenithOptimedia and OMD India. Yatin has donned multiple roles in his stint with the Omnicom Media Group (OMG) and has been with the company since 2009, enhancing the agency’s investment vertical offerings and delivering competitive advantage to clients.

Over the years, he has lent his strong business acumen to a wide array of prestigious brands like Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Renault-Nissan, Volkswagen Group, Apple, Standard Chartered & Sony Pictures to name a few.

In his leisure time, Yatin is an active sportsperson and fitness enthusiast who enjoys running marathons and serving smashes on the badminton court.

Amit Verma
Head of Marketing, Rapido

Amit Verma, is an avid marketer with more than a decade of global experience in Performance & Growth Marketing, Brand Development and Pricing. He has an expertise in mining consumer insights and building brands through storytelling and advertising.

In his long spanning career, Amit has led marketing, digital transformation and growth for many brands in his previous assignments with Zoomcar, Noon, Shopclues, PayU, ZO, Maxus & Percept and considers himself as a professional who placates a method in the madness for the marketing and non-linear hyper-growth setup and currently is the Head of Marketing and Growth of India’s Largest Bike Taxi Platform, Rapido.

Until recently, he has steered major campaigns like #CaptainsofTomorrow and #PromiseofProtection enabling increase in awareness of bike taxis and its benefits in India. With constant marketing efforts put towards destigmatizing pillion riding in bike taxis since its conception, Rapido is the pioneer and one of the market leaders of the segment.

P Madhavan
Executive Vice President - Sales & Marketing, TVS Srichakra Limited

Madhavan is Executive Vice President - Sales & Marketing at TVS Srichakra Limited, one of India’s largest tyre manufacturing companies. He heads the corporate marketing function, two-wheeler tyre business for India and global markets and has been instrumental in strengthening various facets at TVS Srichakra.

He has had a long and distinguished career of over 3 decades in Indian and multinational corporations with a long record of successful stints in traditional and new age industries. His leadership expertise includes strategic planning, implementation and driving disruptive growth. Technology is his passion and Madhavan leaves no stone unturned to explore innovations in the digitalization space. Before joining TVS Srichakra, he was the Business Head & Chief Delivery Officer at HCL Infosystems. Has also been with bluechip corporations such as the Tata Group, Pepsico and Nestle.

An alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur with a certificate in Business Management, Madhavan is a graduate in Science from Vivekananda College, Chennai and he also holds a Diploma in Business Management from Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan.

Madhavan is a results-driven leader who focusses on winning in highly competitive environments that demand innovation and continuous improvement. With a large part of his career in FMCG and telecom, his forte lies in managing large and global teams.

His interests range from cricket to management books and plays a key role in CII as its Co-Chair in the International Linkages Sub-Committee for South India. He is also an active member of Rotary Club of Madras East, Chennai. He loves student mentorship and never misses an opportunity to engage with students on management / sports and beyond.

Divya Karani
Chief Executive Officer - South Asia, dentsu media

South Asia Chief Executive Officer, dentsu media (Carat, dentsu X, iProspect and Posterscope) Board Director: Dentsu Advertising & Media Services, Dentsu Communication India, Amnet Trading India and Jagran Prakashan

Divya Karani leads media business for dentsu in South Asia and works closely with global leadership to deliver digital-first end to end media solutions for clients.

Divya has over 3 decades of experience with Agency, Marketer and Media organizations, in South East Asia, London & Asia Pacific. She has won and successfully run media mandates, for marquee Indian and global clients.

In the past 11 years, she has led dentsu media to become the #1 agency, RECMA February 2021, scaling up business on a market-beating trajectory, year-on-year.

Divya is an active participant and has been contributing to the industry consistently through these years, harnessing the opportunity, the privilege and the responsibility to use our powers for the lasting good of everyone. She has been serving on the Jagran Prakashan Board since 2019 and has accepted the role of National President, Brand & Marketing, Women’s Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry. She has also played the role of championing Radio as Chairperson, MRUC Radio Committee and served on Media Research Users Council Board 2014-2017 & 2006-2010. She has been a Judge on International News Media Association-INMA Global Awards and Jury member for Cannes Media Lion, Spikes Asia.

Abhishek Ganguly
Managing Director - India & Southeast Asia, PUMA

Abhishek Ganguly is a passionate consumer-focussed business leader with an ambitious bent for strategy, action, speed, and team-building. As a key member of the global leadership team at PUMA, Abhishek has been instrumental in establishing PUMA as the No.1 Sports Brand in India and has a proven track record of driving the successful business in the Sports & Lifestyle ecosystem of 19 growth markets such as India, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines.

As a member of the founding team of PUMA in India in 2006, he built the Sales, Marketing, Retail, Product, Sourcing, and Operations functions of the company. Realizing that there was a significant technology led opportunity in the sports and lifestyle retail in the region, he led digital transformation breakthroughs ahead of the times enabling the brand to cement its market leadership position in India. Keeping the brand relevant, relatable and connected has been key to the success of the PUMA brand.

An active Angel Investor, Abhishek funds and mentors promising start-ups. He is part of the Indian Angel Network and an LP in Stellaris Venture Partners. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow, Abhishek was recognized by The Economic Times on it’s 40 under Forty list of India Inc.’s top business leaders in 2018. In his leisure time, Abhishek loves following and playing Sports. He believes in holistic approach to fitness and wellness.