Brands, Brews and Banter

Ramesh understands the Indian consumer marketing ecosystem better than most having built brands like PhonePe and Flipkart. In this candid episode he talks about all things marketing, hiring and great work.

Shreya leads marketing at Puma India and comes off experience as a consultant at McKinsey. Here she talks about imposter syndrome, hiring and how sports marketing in India has a long way to go till maturity.

Mansha has worked in two of the most transformative consumer tech companies the world has ever seen - Apple and Google. She has led Marketing for Apple Music and iTunes, and currently runs Marketing in India for (a) YouTube and its slate of products - Music, Premium, Shorts, Kids (b) Google Brand & Reputation

Gayatri's a brand marketeer with specialisation in digital, social and media strategy for top tier brands including Intel, Amazon, Yahoo and FMCG brands (Unilever, Coke, etc) from my publisher/agency stints.

Bikram has had an illustrious career at McCann, Grey, BBDO and Ogilvy before his current mandate of global creative & marketing strategy at the ABSOLUT group. He's also an adjunct faculty at MICA.

With over 18 years of experience in diverse industries such as FMCG, Retail, Stationery, CPG, and FMCD/FMEG, Anuj is a business-first marketing professional. He holds PGDM from IIM-Ahmedabad, BTech from Kurukshetra University, and executive education certificates in Design Thinking and IoT from MIT Sloan

Devanshu Bhatia is the Head of Marketing at Oberoi Group (Oberoi Hotels and Resorts, and Trident Hotels), the top luxury hotel brand. He has over eighteen years of experience across industries in digital marketing, brand building, driving growth and setting up high performance culture. He is an expert in delivering customer experience and digital transformation, using AI, CRM, loyalty programs, and data analytics to maximize revenue and engagement. He also manages new projects, brand building, and cross-functional teams for Oberoi Hotels and Resorts, Trident Hotels, and other Oberoi Group businesses. His mission is to create seamless and innovative experiences across digital and offline channels for the discerning travelers. He has successfully marketed start-ups and international brand expansions showcasing his versatility and vision in the marketing domain.

Tara Kapur is an award-winning marketer with extensive experience in the media and entertainment industry. She has worked for several high-profile companies, including Netflix, Vice Media, and currently at Duolingo. Tara began her career in journalism, working for leading media organizations in India such as The Times Group, ET NOW, and Bloomberg TV. After several years in the industry, she transitioned to marketing, bringing her storytelling skills and expertise to the field. Currently, Tara is working as the Head of Marketing for Duolingo English Test in India, where she leads the company's marketing efforts for it's english proficiency test in the region.

Arvind R P has over 20 years of cross-industry experience across brands like McDonald's, Kaya, Levi's and Britannia with a successful track record in driving sales, strategic planning, e-commerce, brand building, category management & innovations, CRM & digital marketing. Hear him talk about India's changing palettes and aspirations from the McDonald's lens here.

Amritansu has been a part of multiple 0-100 journeys in some stellar startups. He gives some serious elder brother vibes here and discusses how he crafted his journey so far purely on making the most out of serendipity.

Vani is among the best marketing minds out there right now. She's got ~25 yrs' marketing experience with PepsiCo, Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, Henkel, BBDO and Leo Burnett. Currently she helps challenger brands build amazing brands through her work at CherryPeachPlum (⁠http://www.cherrypeachplum.in)⁠ If she works on your brand, you're assured of results that'll scale and last, and I am assured of one coffee per client (Ya, this is a kickback disclosure). Also, do check out her first ever film for ADIDAS that she talks about in the episode (https://youtu.be/HQ7PFmbvmMY?si=xufeVfYNUpMhJ818)

Sandeep is an ace brand marketer with over a decade of brand-building experience with P&G, Reckitt & Swiggy in e-commerce, Haircare, Hygiene & F&B categories. He now works to simplify brand marketing for B2C startups with less than $10M ARR and help them drive revenue, through his work at David n Who.

Sumanto is a creative consultant, writer, actor and the creator of The English Nut. He is the former chairman & chief creative officer of 82.5 Communications, Ogilvy Group, which he helped launch in 2019. Earlier, he was the executive creative director, South Asia, Ogilvy. Sumanto has built brands like Dove, Pond’s and Star Plus, successfully relaunched UTI Bank as Axis Bank and helped launch brands like Pro Kabaddi, Maharashtra Tourism and The Economist. This, while helping build the Mumbai, Kolkata and Colombo offices of Ogilvy. He works on both traditional and digital ads. Sumanto has won advertising awards at Cannes, the Clios, the One Show, the London Festival, the Abbies and Kyoorius. 2018: Grand Effie for the Star Plus campaign. 2017: the Star Plus campaign swept the Kyoorius Awards. 2016: the AMES awards for his Diu campaign. 2015: Cannes Health Lion for the filaria eradication campaign (Government of India). 2014: Cannes gold and silver and the Kyoorius Black Elephant for the Twitter-based CleftToSmile initiative (Operation Smile India). 2012: Cannes Lion and more for the work on iFOLD, a paper-saving initiative of Ogilvy (implemented by Vodafone). 2010: Cannes Lion and other international awards for The Economist campaign. Sumanto was named The Creative Professional of the Year, 2008, at the Asian Brand Congress. Ranked 10th amongst advertising creative people in Asia by Media magazine in 2007, 4th in India by Campaign Brief Asia in 2008. The same year, his campaign for adoption awareness was ranked 12th in the world by the Gunn Report. Sumanto is also an actor and model. He was nominated for the best actor award at the Filmmaker Festival of World Cinema in France, Germany and UK. Sumanto occasionally writes columns on advertising, communication and travel. Sumanto's alter ego is The English Nut on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Check him out for wit and wisdom about the English language.

After 2 decades building some iconic brands at GSK, Shubhajit Sen moved on to lead marketing at Micromax (where we intersected). In his current mandate, he works with all kinds of businesses as a consultant helping them grow, scale and build brands/businesses which last.

Eashwari is currently the Head of Ads Marketing, Large Customers at Google India. Before this she spent a mammoth innings of 16+ years at Intel, where she did roles across brand, partner, channel marketing and corp comms. Do listen to this abridged epsiode with her quick words of advise.

Pranesh is amazing! I first spoke with him when he was leading a large part of the marketing pod at Samsung. His latest avatar is being a part of changing the EV landscape in the country. Ather is a fantastic brand and I cannot wait to see what the brand does under his stewardship. After a career in the Indian Air Force, Pranesh spent time on the agency side, before moving on to the consumer electronics space. In this episode we talk about his current mandate and if the Indian Air Force has a marketing problem. Tune in now!

Saurabh has 19 years of experience in Business Development, Sales, Marketing & Innovation with Vodafone Idea, Britannia Industries, USL - Diageo, Mondelez (Cadbury) & Wipro Consumer Care. He is currently managing Product Marketing for the Vodafone Idea Prepaid Business a 30,000 Cr portfolio of product & services. He was awarded 50 Best Marketing & Communication Professionals by White Page International in 2021; Rising Star CMO Trailblazer by DMA Asia in 2022, India's Top 100 Digital Marketers by Adlift in 2023

Multi-award winning marketing and communication leader with 16 years of cross-category experience across media, e-commerce, retail and real estate. She was also the CMO Trailblazer award 2021 by DMA Asia, Most Influential Content Marketers by World Marketing Congress and Voot (Viacom 18) India's Best Marketers 2021

Mayur Gupta is an engineer who evolved into a marketer with several pivots through his career. He spent the first half of his career in tech and product management, building adtech products before gradually shifting towards growth, performance, data science, brand, creative and storytelling - the core tenets of modern marketing. In 2021 and 2020, Mayur was recognized by Forbes as the Top 50 Most Influential CMOs in the world.

Apoorv Sharma is an ace marketer who currently works on Brand Marketing at Apple. His earlier stints at Amazon and Flipkart gave him a ring side view to brands being built on e-commerce platforms. Listen/Watch him talk about his journey in this really fun episode.