Shashi Sinha, the current CEO – India, IPG Mediabrands, manages the second-largest Media Agency Group that includes Lodestar UM, Initiative Media, Interactive Avenues, Mediabrands, BPN, Reprise, Rapport, Kinesso, Orion, Society & Magna Global in India. The group manages approximately 20% of the overall media spend in the country and is widely recognized for its strategic approach to media solutions across a wide portfolio of over 100 blue-chip clients such as – Samsung, Amazon, Amul, Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson.
Shashi has over 30 years of industry experience and is involved in various industry bodies like ASCI, AAAI, ABC and others. He is an alumni of IIT Kanpur & IIM Bangalore.
Rajiv Bakshi is the Chief Operations Officer, Revenue at Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd.
In this role, Rajiv contributes towards achieving the Company’s revenue objectives by identifying and leveraging internal synergies across all linear TV and Digital/OTT platforms. He is responsible for developing revenue generating solutions to deliver the highest value to ZEE’s partner ecosystem and to drive efficiencies across all revenue generation avenues. His focus includes leveraging technology to augment revenue, leading marketing initiatives for the vertical and strengthening relations with external stakeholders and partners.
Prior to Zee, Rajiv was the CEO of Reliance Entertainment's Big Synergy, one of India's most respected content development and production companies, where he built a multi-platform, multi-geography and multi-lingual success. Earlier he turned around Discovery Networks India, where he worked as Product & Marketing Head and built its entire 11-channel portfolio. He has also been the Chief Marketing Officer of a USD 1 Billion homegrown Indian disruptor in Smartphones and Consumer Durables.
An alumnus of Harvard Business School, Rajiv comes with over 20 years of diverse work experience in Business Transformation, P&L and Commercial Operations, Corporate Strategy, Brand Management, Product Development, Digital Strategy and Market Expansions across varied industries. As his passion, he strives to transform lives as a life-coach with a kids' NGO and promoting grassroots innovators.
Official Twitter Handle - @rajiv_bakshi
Rana Barua is CEO of Havas Group India - in sync with the global "Together" strategy of collaboration and integration, that brings together Havas Group agencies of different disciplines under a unified leadership. A believer in leading from the front, Rana has over 26 years of experience in the media industry.
Rana oversees all companies of Havas Group in India which includes 10 specialist agencies across 3 Villages (Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai) with over 1000 employees.
Rana is on the mancom of the IAA, The Advertising Club, and is an executive committee member and honorary treasurer of AAAI. As CEO of Havas Group India, he is part of the committee at The Indo-French Chamber of Commerce & Industry (IFCCI).
Rana presides on the board of many leading companies across the Havas group. He is also a speaker at leading MBA institutions across the country.
Mahesh Shetty joined Viacom18 in April 2019 and leads the media & entertainment network's revenue function. An industry veteran, Shetty has over 25 years of experience in Media and FMCG sectors, managing varied P&L and functional leadership roles.
Since joining Viacom18, Shetty has taken the charge of streamlining revenue generation within the organisation. He has helped the network forge strong relationships with clients across industry segments through enriching the value proposition. In addition to leading the network sales mandate, Shetty has also been overseeing the Consumer Products and Integrated Network Solutions business units.
In his 12.5 years long tenure at Radio Mirchi, he was one of the chief architects of driving Mirchi's growth in the cluttered private FM space and building Mirchi as a dominant market leader. Mahesh joined Mirchi as VP and cluster head of Tamil nadu when it a 7-station network in India and in his decade plus stint he donned multiple roles finally exiting as the Chief Operating officer running a 76-station network. He also served as the Chief Strategy office where he is credited with starting and scaling Mirchi's international business, leading Mirchi's Phase 3 expansion and scaling up the IP properties business with large format multi lingual properties such as Mirchi Music Awards.
Prior to joining Radio Mirchi he had a long stint of over 10 years with PepsiCo International.In PepsiCo he worked across multiple markets in various sales and marketing roles. In his last role as General Manager - On Premise Sales, he was responsible for managing and building the On Premise & Modern Trade sales channels for India along with managing Key national customer relationships.
Mahesh is an avid sports and movies buff, always ready for a game of cricket or banter on Bollywood trivia. He loves the outdoors and heads to Rishikesh for rafting whenever he gets a chance. Mahesh holds a Bachelors' Degree in Commerce from Mumbai University and an MBA from Institute for Technology & Management, Mumbai.
Vikram is the Equity Partner and Group CEO of Madison Media & OOH, India's largest independent Media Agency. In his 30 year career, he has been the global CEO of Maxus, the CEO of GroupM South Asia and Mindshare South Asia. Vikram started his career with P&G and Coca-Cola in Media, Market Research and Brand Marketing. He also set up the marketing department at Star India (Newscorp). His career highlights include setting up India's first Media AOR; starting India's first afternoon soap opera (and daily strip); a great track record of product launches including Ariel, Whisper, Sprite, Diet Coke, Kinley, IPL; pioneering a series of researches in India including BASES, Conversion Model, a Purchase Retail Audit and Consumption Panel; and being part of the leadership team that started Mindshare and GroupM in India/ South Asia. Under his leadership Mindshare was the undisputed Agency of the Year at most Indian awards. In the last five years he has been shaping Madison to address the key pillars of Outcomes, Audience Planning and Integrity. Vikram has sat on several industry body boards/ committees including ASCI, ABC, RSCI, BARC and FICCI. He is currently the Head of IRS Tech Comm, MRUC Board member, ABC Board member, BARC Disciplinary committee member, Co-chair of IBF-AAAI subcommittee on payments, Ad Club ManCom member. He has consistently been voted amongst the most influential persons in Indian Media by the Economic Times
Avinash is currently the Chief Executive Officer - News18 Broadcast News & Managing Director, A+E Networks|TV18. Avinash joined TV18 in mid 2014 as the CEO of IBN News Network and prior to that he was the Chief Executive Officer at Bennett Coleman & Company Ltd Division (Times Now, ET Now & Zoom) & CEO of Sahara One Media and Entertainment Ltd. He was part of the launch team of NDTV when it became a broadcaster in 2001 and also set up the consulting division of NDTV Media which worked on brands like MSN, Disney, Nickelodeon among other regional and national channels brands in India. His earlier stints in media were with Star India and Discovery Communications. Avinash has done his Masters in Media Studies from Sydenham Institute of Management Studies and is a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from Pune University.
Aditya has the privilege of leading some of the brightest minds in advertising in his role as CEO & Managing Director of the DDB Mudra Group. Under his leadership, the company has been recognised as one of the Top 20 creative agencies globally; with back-to-back Lions at Cannes 2018, 2019 and 2021, a Grand Prix at Spikes 2019, and the prestigious WARC Prize for Asian Strategy among others.
He's a firm proponent of Bill Bernbach's view that 'creativity is the most powerful force in business'. This belief-in-action is the fuel behind the group's industry-leading new business performance, No.2 position in Effie India and Top 20 in Effie Index's most effective agencies in the world.
Aditya believes diversity and inclusion is both non-negotiable and critical to creating a strong creative culture. He supports important initiatives like 'The Phyllis Project' - creating a community of strong women leaders and 'Open Pride' - fostering an inclusive and engaging work environment for the LGBTQIA+ community & allies.
Raj is a native of Odhisa - one the most disaster-prone states of India. Because of which, with his doctor dad, a large part of his childhood was spent being part of flood rescues and spending school breaks in village hospitals. These experiences taught him one of his biggest life lessons - Empathy.
So when he joined advertising, his goal was to use creativity and help brands make a positive impact on human lives. From creating India's first online micro-financing system for business giants TATA's, to innovating "Roads that Honk" - world's first anti- collusion road management system for a Petroleum giant. In 2015 the team with him saved India's biggest national treasure - a warship, from getting redundant. With the help of Bajaj, India's biggest automobile company they melted the scrapped ship and made motorbikes out of it so that every Indian can own a piece of the national treasure. His work 'Whisper, Touch the Pickle' won the inaugural Cannes Glass Lions Grand Prix for breaking the menstruation taboo in India.
On the way, while creating Humankind work which is impactful and change oriented, he has also won multiple Grand Prix and metals at Cannes, One Show, D&AD and Spikes Asia. But he believes his biggest creation till date is Apollo 11 a specialised division of Leo Burnett India, consisting of what he calls 'the mutant creatives'. Team of young people in their 20's with backgrounds like aerospace engineering, product designers, data analyst and environment scientists solving human and brand problems with him.
Josy started BBDO India from the backseat of his car in 2008 with Ajai Jhala.
In 2016, he was named Creative Agency Head of The Year by the IAA (Indian Advertising Association). Campaign Magazine awarded him 'Creative Person of the Year for India and South Asia' in 2013, 2015 and 2016. He is ranked among the Top Ten Most Influential People in Indian advertising, according to the nationwide survey conducted by The Economic Times.
In 2015, Josy and his team won the inaugural Glass Lion Grand Prix at Cannes - for Whisper's 'Touch The Pickle'. They also won the Glass Lion Gold for Ariel's 'Share the Load' - in 2015 and 2016, as well as the prestigious Yellow Pencil at D&AD 2017 and the White Pencil at the inaugural D&AD Social Impact awards in 2016.
BBDO India's work for Ariel (#ShareTheLoad) has been ranked as the world's most effective campaign by WARC 100 two years in a row - 2017 and 2018.
Josy and his partner Ajai Jhala pioneered the idea of Brand Movements with the belief that India needs more 'acts not ads'. This led to market changing transformational work - starting with Gillette's 'Women Against Lazy Stubble', which won the first Black Lion for Creative Effectiveness at Cannes in 2011.
Josy lives by the mantra; 'Think like the navy, deliver like the pirates'.
An astute businessman, Ashish Bhasin is an industry veteran with over 32 years of experience. Tasked to expand the Global footprint of Aegis Media in India, Ashish joined the London-headquartered Media & Marketing Conglomerate in June 2008. Eventually, he went on to build Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) India from a 50-member team to a 3500-member powerhouse, now the 2nd largest Advertising and Marketing Communications Group in India, overturning for the first time the existing ranking, which has historically been in place for over 80 years. His vision of building a digital-first agency and his One P&L philosophy has proven to be extremely successful. Today, he is CEO APAC & Chairman India, dentsu and a member of the dentsu international Global Executive Team. His strong focus on key growth opportunities has resulted in several consecutive years of revenue growth for the business. Conferred with a PhD (Honoris Causa) for outstanding contribution to the Advertising & Media Industry, Ashish serves or has served on most industry bodies in India including as President AAAI, chairman MRUC, Chairman Goafest, BARC, ABC and others.
Anil Wanvari, is the founder, CEO and editor in chief of the Indiantelevision.com group. He has spent more than 37 years in the media industry and is considered India's foremost analyst, consultant and catalyst for the media sector.
The Indiantelevision.com group which he has set up has a mission to educate, engage, entertain and enrich the audiences it serves in the various verticals.
It achieves this through the various B2B portals the group runs: indiantelevision.com (for the cable, satellite, OTT, production, advertising, marketing, media industries), tellychakkar.com (TV show and actor news for TV fans), AnimationXpress.com (for the VFX, comics, gaming, and animation segments) and radionandmusic.com (for the FM radio, digital music and music industry).
The Indiantelevision.com group engages with the industry through the various conferences it runs: Indian Digital Operators Summit (IDOS), VidNET, News Television Summit, The Content Hub. The group executes market engagement activities for industry clients - both online and offline through road shows and events. The entertainment part comes in through the India's oldest television awards The Indian Telly Awards which Anil initiated way back in 2000. Additionally, the group also organizes The News Television Awards.
Anil has been Paris-based Reed Midem's India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh representative for some of the world's largest audiovisual content trade exhibitions - MIPTV, MIPCOM, MIPFormats, MIPDoc, MIPCancun,Midem and MIPChina. He represents the world's No 1 property market for the same markets, as well as Reed Exhibitions Asia Television Forum, Singapore.
