Niraj Ruparel
Head Of Mobile & Emerging Tech Groupm India & Head Of Voice, WPP India

Niraj Ruparel - Top 25 Mobile Marketing Leaders In India 2019 - World Mobile Congress / Top 40 Asia Pacific’s Rising Talent 2019 - Campaign Asia Pacific / 2x Groupm Choreos Winner

Niraj heads Mobility and Emerging Tech at Groupm India, he has vast experience in mobile marketing, consumer platforms, brand communications and marketing analytics. Previously, at Madhouse, Niraj was managing over 200 brand relationships, delivering world

class solutions in cross media marketing, rural marketing, rich media innovations, brand activations and product sales. Before Madhouse, Niraj managed mobile loyalty and mobile churn management solutions to large telcos and FMCGs. Having spoken to mobile Indians, from a SMS-only past to an always-on data present, Niraj has confidently solved nearly every marketing problem. His expertise in the mobile and new-age technology space has played a crucial role for some of the brands at Mindshare. His work on Lifebouy and Godrej has won Cannes and I-com Data Creativity Awards lately. He is also the jury member for the renowned MMA Smarties 2019.

Niraj has been instrumental in driving Voice Practice for WPP India, enabling WPP agencies and clients in India to build engaging and informational skills on Voice.

Niraj is a die-hard fitness fanatic and an avid hula hooper!

Gulrez Alam
Chief Investment & Strategy Officer, Affle

Gulrez Alam, is the Chief Investment & Strategy Officer at Affle Holdings. He has over 15 years of experience and drives Affle’s strategy & investments decisions. With an inspiring entrepreneurial journey behind him, Gulrez now divides his time across geographies and use his extensive experience in extending the Company offerings to key clients across Industries.

Manish Kalra
Senior VP & Business Head, AVOD, Zee5

Coming soon...

Thomas Barta
Author & Former Partner of McKinsey

Thomas is an organizational psychologist and a former partner of McKinsey. His pioneering research brings a fresh perspective to MARKETING: LEADERSHIP – including the world’s largest study, with over 68,000 assessments – on what makes for an impactful marketer.

Thomas has consulted and marketed for over 20 years, in 14 industries, in 45 countries. His clients include many of the world’s most prominent companies, including over two dozen from the Fortune 500.

After a fast-track marketing career at Kimberly-Clark (Kleenex), Thomas became a partner of McKinsey. As a dean of the firm’s highest-rated internal program, Thomas trained over a thousand McKinsey leaders on driving change without authority.

For the McKinsey and Marketing Academy CMO Fellowship, Thomas serves as its long-standing leadership dean. He is also the personal advisor for a select group of global CMOs.

Thomas holds an MBA from London Business School and a Master’s in Clinical Organizational Psychology from INSEAD Business School (France and Singapore).

He is also the author of the first leadership book for marketers: The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader (with Patrick Barwise, McGraw-Hill). Thomas writes for Forbes, Marketing Week, and his own TryThis.Blog. He has given hundreds ofNEW MARKETING speeches and masterclasses for companies, associations, and universities--including Adobe, Cisco, Google, IBM, SAP, and Advertising Week.

Siddhant Narayan
Head Of Marketing, OnePlus

Siddhant Narayan is Head of Marketing for India at OnePlus and is responsible for elevating the brand’s position by spearheading the marketing strategy with the aim of establishing a deeper connection and increasing the brand salience with the Indian consumer. He leads the brand’s ongoing marketing efforts to build its connected ecosystem business in India and plays a crucial role towards strengthening OnePlus’ brand positioning, media and creative strategies, along with its community culture and engagement.

Prior to joining OnePlus, Siddhant was the Marketing Head for the Indian subcontinent at Daniel Wellington, where he launched the brand in India and created an omni-channel marketing strategy. Siddhant also worked as Head of Brand Story at Reliance Jio, and was an integral part of Nike’s Marketing team, wherein he contributed immensely towards creating global and regional brand campaigns to bring alive the spirit of the iconic sports brand in India. He is an alumnus of the MIT School of Business, Pune, and holds a degree in advertising and PR from the renowned Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai. Siddhant was a professional cricketer during his early days and continues to be passionate about sport and fitness.

Karthi Marshan
President & Chief Marketing Officer, Kotak Mahindra Bank

Karthi Marshan oversees marketing efforts across all verticals with Kotak’s presence, including insurance, banking, brokerage, asset management et al.

Previously, Karthi helmed the marketing function of IDBI Bank. He is also a co-founder of Sharekhan, one of India's leading retail brokerage firms.

Karthi started his professional career as a copywriter, then moved on to account management at Grey Worldwide, and subsequently produced television content for Sony India. Prior to joining Kotak, Karthi was based out of Sydney, where he helped turn around an ailing DTH business that catered to the Indian diaspora in the ANZ region.

An alumnus of IIM Bangalore (class of '92), Karthi is a Bombayite who has been trying to escape from the madness of Mumbai all his adult life. Bengaluru is his favourite city in India; Goa comes a close second.

Pallavi Singh
Director Marketing, BMW India

Pallavi Singh is a senior Brand Marketing professional, with extensive experience in the premium automotive market segment for over 15 years. At present, she is Director Marketing for BMW India. Her area of expertise and focus is related to Business Strategy, Customer Experience, Digital-first approach, Data led decision making, and communication.

Pallavi has been instrumental in the launch of Iconic Brands like Harley-Davidson and Morris Garages (MG) in India. She loves to travel the world, especially on 2 wheels.

Navin Madhavan
VP & GM of Growth Platforms, InMobi

Navin Madhavan, as VP of Growth Platforms at InMobi, helps brands globally drive growth and to achieve their performance/ outcome-based advertising goals by leveraging the digital medium, especially mobile. In his previous role, Navin worked with app developers across Asia Pacific to identify the right monetization strategy for their media properties to grow their revenue. In other roles at InMobi, he has led strategic partnerships with enterprises in India to help them leverage their existing data sets for effective marketing, driving the strategy & operations for InMobi’s global programmatic business, and operated as a part of the CEO's office. Navin holds an MBA from IIM Bangalore and a degree in engineering from BITS-Pilani.

Sujatha V Kumar
Head of Marketing – India & South Asia , VISA

Overview: Sujatha has over 20 years of working experience in the field of Marketing. She has worked extensively in all key areas, such as Brand Development, Launch Strategy, Category Management, Retail Strategy and Promotions, Creating Advertising, Media, Consumer Behaviour, Client Engagement, Market Research and In-market implementation of Programs

Current Position and Responsibilities: Sujatha is the Head of Marketing for Visa for the India and South Asia region. She is responsible for driving the overall marketing strategy and execution, including consumer, retail and digital marketing initiatives for India and the emerging markets of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and the Maldives.

Previous Positions: Prior to joining Visa, Sujatha was leading Marketing & Strategy at Google as Head of Brand & Reputation. Sujatha started her career at Procter & Gamble and, over the years, has gathered rich experience in sales and marketing across strong consumer marketing companies such as Gillette, Nokia, The Royal Bank of Scotland and Coca-Cola.

Other Information: Sujatha is a graduate in Psychology and holds an MBA in Marketing. She is also the lead singer of a band "Mid Life Crisis” (a band comprising people from the corporate world who have a passion for music), and they have been performing in concerts for the last five years.

Anil Viswanathan
Senior Director - Marketing (Chocolates), Insights & Analytics, Mondelez India

Anil Viswanathan is Senior Director - Marketing (Chocolates), Insights & Analytics at Mondelez India Foods Private Ltd. His role includes strategizing and landing the overall innovation & communication agenda on chocolate brands and delivering the P&L for this category, in India. Most recently, Anil also took up an additional responsibility of leading the Insights & Analytics function for the business.

Anil joined Mondelez India in May 2000 as a management trainee and has spent more than two decades in the company, across a variety of roles including Sales, Brand & Category marketing, Strategy and New Business Development. His journey in the company has taken him into Regional and Global roles and into different categories including Chocolates and Biscuits. In his last role in India, Anil was managing marketing for Chocolates. Most recently, Anil was a part of the Global Chocolate Team driving chocolate innovation based out of Zurich, Switzerland. One of his achievements, amongst many others, has been the launch of Cadbury 5Star globally, which is now present in 3 continents including markets like Brazil and South Africa.

Anil holds a MBA in Marketing & Finance from IIM, Calcutta and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT, Madras. He is married to Sangeetha and they have a daughter, Suhasini.

Karan Shroff
Chief Marketing Officer, Unacademy

Karan Shroff is the Chief Marketing Officer at Unacademy. He joined Unacademy in mid of 2019 as the Vice President for Marketing and was elevated to the CMO role in September 2020. He is responsible for all marketing efforts including performance marketing, brand management among others. He led the popular campaign Let’s Crack It that included a catchy anthem to motivate students across the nation. The anthem, along with the memorable TVCs reached a fever pitch on social media within days of being released.

Previously Karan led Brand marketing at Xiaomi India where he played a significant role in building Xiaomi’s widespread popularity among customers in India through iconic campaigns which include KiskaBaja campaign, and the Naya Note campaign among many others. He also spearheaded the Xiaomi India initiative that won a Guinness World Record achievement for the brand, creating world’s largest lit mosaic (logo).

Karan serves on the jury board of the prestigious Effies, WOW Awards Asia Committee, and was also awarded the Marketer of the Year 2018 and 2019 by IAA Leadership Award held by International Advertising Association (IAA) and chosen as one of the Top 30 Hot Young Marketers by Economic Times Brand Equity. Karan has also been featured in Bloomberg-Quint’s Ace Team Initiative series, Campaign India’s A-List initiative and CNBC Storyboard. He was also named the Most Influential Youth Marketing Professional by Global Youth Marketing Forum 2019. He was chosen by e4m OOH as one of the Most Influential Marketers for 2020.

With over a decade of valuable marketing and event expertise, Karan’s prior contributions include working with Herbalife International India Pvt. Ltd. & previously leading key events for Wizcraft International Pvt. Ltd. and Bertelsmann earlier in his career. Karan has also founded Ignis events and co-founded Pixie events, offering event management solutions to major clients such as Pepsi, Nike, HSBC, and Airtel to name a few.

Annurag Batra
Editor in Chief

Annurag Batra is a serial entrepreneur, media mogul, a journalist and an eternal optimist rolled into one. He is a B. Tech in Computer Sciences, a degree, which he acquired before joining Management Development Institute MDI Gurgaon (Now its Gurugram), one of India's leading Business School. He is a first generation entrepreneur and after acquiring the iconic business media and magazine brand BW Businessworld. a 35 year strong media brand as well as most respected business publication in the country.

Since taking over BW Businessworld Mr. Batra has expanded BW Businessworld into digital, events and BW communities and has taken into its fold www.digitalmarket.asia, a leading website on digital marketing, www.everythingexperiential.com India’s leading experiential marketing website and launch BW Hotelier in partnership with hotelier international. BW Smart Cities an editorial platform in a 360 degree format is to be launched in mid February 2015. Mr. Batra is building the BW Businessworld business aggressively.

Mr. Batra also founded the exchange4media group and he serves as the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of exchange4media group which includes exchange4media.com – India’s leading media industry website, PITCH – India’s only Advertising, Marketing and Media Magazine, IMPACT – The Marketing Weekly, Franchisee Plus – Business Opportunity Magazine, Realty Plus – India’s leading monthly real estate magazine and samachar4media.com/ – leading media industry website in Hindi.

Mr. Batra is also appointed by Government of India as the Chairman of an industry committee formed to come up with a vocational training framework for the media, communication and entertainment industry. He mentors many budding entrepreneurs and enjoys the process of reverse mentoring as in what he learns from these young entrepreneurs. At BW Businessworld BW Accelerate is an initiative to provide a structured platform to entrepreneurs for mentorship and growth.

Gaurav Gandhi
Director & Country General Manager, Amazon Prime Video, India

In his role at Amazon, Gaurav Gandhi is responsible for driving the business of Prime Video in India. Before this, he was the Chief Operating Officer at Viacom18 Digital Ventures, where he launched the company’s Video streaming service VOOT. He successfully led every aspect of the VOOT business including content, product and technology, marketing, advertising sales as well as other functions.

In his 8-year stint with Viacom18, Gaurav built & led various businesses for the company. He joined Viacom18 in March 2010 as Chief Commercial Officer & Head of International Business. In January 2011, he took over as the COO of Sun18 and in May 2012, he helped set-up IndiaCast Media Distribution (a Viacom18 & TV18 joint venture) as the Group COO – where his mandate was to maximize both revenues and reach for content and channel services from the group. Before moving to the Viacom18 Digital Ventures role in August 2015, Gaurav was also responsible for building out the entire International business for the group (including Ad-sales, Distribution & Licensing) and expanding the footprint of the content & services to 135 countries.

An alumnus of NMIMS, Gaurav started his career in advertising with Madison Media in 1998, handling the Coca-Cola India business. In his next role at Turner International (in 2000), he handled the research for all Turner India brands.  He then moved to STAR India (in 2003), where he managed & lead various portfolios over the years – the last being Head of Commercial & Business Planning for the network. He then moved on to set up NDTV Imagine in 2007 - as a founder member & shareholder - where he was responsible for various business & corporate functions as the Executive Vice President - Business Operations.

Gaurav has represented his previous organization as an elected member of the Governing Council of IAMAI (Internet & Mobile Association of India). Gaurav has also been a key member of BARC’s (Broadcast Audience Research Council, India) technical committee for the soon-to-be-launched digital measurement services as well as the television measurement service.

Pratik Mukherjee
Director Marketing, Urban Company

Pratik joined UC in Feb 2019 and has been heading the growth and marketing function for the entire beauty and wellness business for Urban Company. He is an award winning marketer with 10+ Years of Business Leadership Experience in FMCG (6.5 Years) and IT (2.5 Years). Expertise in P&L & Brand Management, Mining Consumer Insights, Launching Brands, Turning around Businesses, Creating Marketing campaigns to accelerate Category and Business growth and Building Direct-to-Consumer Models.

Within UC, Pratik has worked on the National launch of innovative campaigns such as Roll-On waxing technique, My Safe Salon and Smart Salon Campaign featuring Kriti Sanon. He was also instrumental in laying the foundation on UC's Men's Grooming category apart from leading efforts on Urban Company rebranding last year.

Recognition:-

• “Asia President’s Award” for outstanding Business Delivery and Shave India Movements
• Gillette University Grooming Program: “Global President Award”, Festival of Media Awards (Gold)
• Creative Effectiveness Black Lion (1st Indian Campaign) for Gillette Shave India Movement
• Over 100 Awards at Cannes, Spikes, Effies, Ad fest, Asian Marketing Effectiveness Award and Festival of Media Awards for Shave India Movements and Soldier for Women

David Dahan
Worldwide Managing Director, OGILVY & Managing Director, WPP@UNILEVER, Ogilvy

David Dahan has led agencies and global client operations for the past ten years in London, Australia and Singapore. Prior to that he was a brand and communication strategist.

Over his twenty years of experience, David worked on very iconic Brands such as Dulux, Mercedes-Benz, J&J, Gillette, Emirates, Hublot and many brands from Unilever – Dove, DiG, Axe, Clear, Hellmann’s and most recently, Pond’s, Vaseline and Comfort.

David is particularly proud of the work he has done on Dove and its Campaign for Real Beauty which is now a case study in terms of inclusive, empathy-driven, brand marketing that tripled the size of the brand.

Sunil Suresh
CMO, MakeMyTrip

Sunil is the Group Chief Marketing Officer for MakeMyTrip Ltd. He is responsible for steering the company’s marketing efforts to support overall strategic objectives, overseeing all initiatives across the marketing funnel, including brand, social performance and innovation marketing tracks.

In his previous stint, Sunil was the Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Capillary Tech for two years and was responsible for driving growth and profits through strategic transformation of the company. Prior to that, he held crucial positions of Chief Digital Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut) wherein he led teams across Middle East, Africa, Pakistan and Turkey. Additionally, Sunil worked with Unilever for over a decade - wherein he held various positions in the Sales and Marketing functions.

Aishvarya Murali
Head Marketing, Ola

Coming soon...

Anurag Mehrotra
CEO Designate, Mahindra Ford Automotive Private Limited

Anurag Mehrotra is the Chief Executive Officer (Designate) of Mahindra Ford automotive Private Limited, a joint venture between Mahindra & Mahindra Limited and Ford Motor Company, that will develop, market and distribute Ford brand vehicles in India and high-growth emerging markets around the world.

Anurag transitions to the JV from his earlier position of President & Managing Director for Ford India, since June 2017 responsible for building a sustainably profitable business for the company.

Anurag during his stint at Ford also served as executive director of Marketing, Sales and Service & vice president of Sales and led several successful marketing campaigns & growing the company’s sales and service footprint.

Before joining Ford India, Mehrotra was vice president-Corporate Marketing at WNS Global Services, a leading business process outsourcing company, where he was responsible for lead generation and brand building in North America and Europe.

Born in 1973, Mehrotra holds a degree in Electronics Engineering & Diploma in marketing management.

Sameer Nigam
Founder & CEO, PhonePe

Sameer Nigam founded PhonePe Private Limited in 2015 and serves as its Chief Executive Officer.

Before starting PhonePe, Sameer served as Senior Vice President - Engineering and Vice President - Marketing at Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce platform. His Flipkart journey started in 2011 when the company acquired his earlier startup - Mime360. Mime360 was a digital media distribution platform.

Sameer has also served as Director of Product Management at Shopzilla Inc, where he built the company's proprietary shopping search engine.

In 2009, he won the coveted Wharton Venture Award, bestowed by the prestigious Wharton Business School. He holds an MBA from Wharton Business School (University of Pennsylvania), USA, and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from University of Arizona, Tucson-USA.

Ravinder Takkar
MD & CEO, Vodafone Idea

Ravinder Takkar is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (MD & CEO) of Vodafone Idea Limited, India’s leading telecom service provider, effective 19th August 2019.

Ravinder’s professional experience of 25+ years spans across cultures and geographies, building a strong track record in the field of business strategy, business planning and development in the ICT sector. Associated with Vodafone Group since 1994, he has worked in leadership positions with several operating companies of Vodafone, in multiple markets across the world.

Prior to taking his current role, Ravinder was the Chairman, Vodafone Group Services & Regional Business Development (Africa, Middle East & Asia Pacific), based out of New Delhi. He has also served as CEO of Vodafone Romania S.A. and as CEO of Vodafone Partner Markets, based in London.

He has been closely associated with the growth and evolution of Indian telecom since Vodafone Group‘s entry in 2007. He held a number of senior roles in Strategy and Business Development and was also the CEO of Vodafone’s Enterprise business in India. He has also served as Director on the Board of erstwhile Vodafone India Limited.

In addition to his responsibilities at Vodafone Idea, Ravinder also serves as Director on the boards of Indus Towers Limited, Cable & Wireless Global (India) Private Limited and Vodafone India Services Private Limited. He led the Indian telecom industry as the Chairman of the industry body, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), in the year 2019-20.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree in computer science from Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.