Piyush Pandey became the national creative director of Ogilvy & Mather India, in 1994 and was inducted to Ogilvy’s worldwide board in 2006. Piyush Pandey has also been named the most influential man in Indian advertising seven years in a row by The Economic Times, India’s premier business paper. Under his leadership, O&M India has won twenty five Lions.

Under Piyush’s leadership, Ogilvy & Mather India has become a creative powerhouse: It has been named India’s most creative agency ten times in the last eleven years.

He has been named the most influential man in Indian advertising seven years in a row by The Economic Times, India’s premier business paper. Under his leadership, O&M India has won twenty five Lions.In 2004, Piyush became the first Asian to be the president of the Cannes jury. He is the only Indian to have won three Grand Prizes at the London International Advertising Awards.

But Piyush doesn’t think of advertising as a job: “When you’re having so much fun, how can you call it work?”

Before he ‘quit working’, Piyush was a professional cricketer and tea-taster. Then in the 80s he put away his teacups and hung up his bat (!) to join Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai. He became its national creative director in 1994. And was

inducted to Ogilvy’s worldwide board in 2006. More recently, Piyush has been appointed as Vice-Chairman, Asia-Pacific.

"A slight man who performs giant deeds and has decades of achievement behind him", says The Brand Reporter, (a marketing magazine in India) describing Sam Balsara. The magazine further says, "Unassuming, affable, and a charmer, the soft spoken Balsara hit the headlines in April 08 with a spectacular deal that made the Media world sit up. He acquired a 51% stake in MediaCom in India."

Sam, is currently the head of the completely Indian owned Madison World, which has 20 units across 10 specialized functions in Advertising, Media, PR, Outdoor, BTL, Rural, Retail, Entertainment, Events and Sports Management. Over the past 21 years, Madison has grown to become a Rs. 20 billion company, employing over 800 communication experts, with offices in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Madison Media in 2006 became the first media agency from India to win 2 Cannes Media Lions.

Over the past decade, Sam headed almost every major industry committee or association, including the Advertising Agencies Association of India; the Advertising Standards Council of India; the Ad Club of Mumbai; and the National Readership Studies Council. He served on the jury to judge the prestigious Media Lions awards at the Advertising Festival in Cannes 2 years ago.

Ranjan was born in 1942, the year the Quit India movement was started, but the full import of its meaning dawned on him several years later when as a young intern at S H Benson (Ogilvy’s previous avatar), he saw his expatriate bosses face expulsion threats from a highly trenchant and well organized union. They finally left in the late sixties, leaving the agency in the hands of Indian managers.

The departure of expats from Benson and JWT also left a management vacuum that was filled by very young talent. Ranjan benefited from this as he rose to a board position before his 30th birthday.

Ranjan also led the return of the Indian expatriate in the early nineties when he returned from a longish stint in the Far East to lead Ogilvy for the next ten years; and to its leadership position. That Ogilvy became India’s most celebrated agency and continues to remain so, is largely attributed to Ranjan’s ability to identify and empower people to take it to greater and greater heights. He stepped down as Chairman of Ogilvy in 2003 and passed the baton on to the very people he helped empower during his tenure as its CEO.

Ranjan is now supposedly retired with a Country Manager’s assignment with WPP, board memberships with blue chip corporates and EXCO membership of The Indian Cancer Society and Bombay First,

Like many other advertising professionals, Goutam Rakshit strayed into advertising more by accident than by choice. During his school days at Cathedral, he had dreamt of leading the life of a gentleman farmer, a goal he says he has not yet given up on. Swayed by the imagery surrounding the IITs, he however joined IIT, Powai, to become an Engineer. Once there, visions of spending the rest of his life on the factory floor soon led him to become one of the first ‘dropouts’ by choice.

Going on to finish his MBA from Bajaj with specialization in Personnel and HRD, he was all set to join TISCO, Jamshedpur, as Executive Assistant to the Chairman, when he was persuaded by Cadbury’s to join as its first Management Trainee, where he had a 8 year stint.

Just when his urge for entrepreneurial independence was leading him to think of setting up a fledgling Management Consultancy firm, a chance meeting with one of the doyens of advertising, Subroto Sengupta, opened up for him exciting visions of what the world of advertising had to offer. In 1980 Goutam became an advertising person, a career he has immensely enjoyed over the last 25 years.

His ultimate dream for independence came true in 1982, when he was inspired by another visionary, Mr L J Reddy, Chairman, of Maxwell Industries, to start an agency for small, Indian companies who desperately needed the help and personal attention of high caliber advertising professionals.Over the years his Agency has helped build brands such as VIP Hosiery, Onida, Skypak, Parachute, Ravalgaon, and many more.

He also holds the unique distinction of having served as Chairman/President of every advertising industry association: AAAI, ABC, NRSC, ASCI. Most recently, Goutam’s entrepreneurial urges propelled him to form a new company, RIPL Ltd, to enter the sunrise segment of organized retail. His flagship mega department store, located in Pune, opened its doors to the public last November, and is growing from strength to strength.

Mr Prem Mehta is Chairman & Managing Director of Lintas India Pvt Ltd. His professional experience spans over 35 years of marketing, advertising and general management with companies like Forbes Forbes Campbell, Hindustan Lever, Richardson Hindustan and Lintas.

When Mr Mehta took over the reigns of Lintas India in 1993, it was a single advertising agency with a few clients. In addition to setting up two completely independent advertising agencies: SSC&B Lintas and Quadrant Communications, distinct from Lowe, 15 other integrated communications companies/divisions were setup under his leadership.

All these services pre-empted the shape of things to come and today represent a significant part of Lintas India, which has evolved into one of the largest communications groups in the country, ten times larger in the last 11 years.

During Prem Mehta’s tenure, Lintas India has become one of the two most successful companies in the Lowe Worldwide system. It has emerged as a critical resource centre and a centre of excellence for Lowe Worldwide which operates in 91 countries through 160 offices.

All along, Prem Mehta has been passionately committed to human resource and executive development. Following on with this commitment he conceived, developed and personally supervised the execution of an executive development centre: Northpoint Centre of Learning. This is a state-of-the-art training facility built on the high slopes of Khandala, over a 100 thousand sq. ft. with conferencing, residential and clubhouse facilities to match the best.

Arun was born with a silver spoon as his title “Divan” indicates. He was chosen from amongst thousands of candidates for the first batch of IIM Ahmedabad in 1966. He was awarded a gold medal from IIM and shared the honours with Dr C K Prahlad, the famous management guru.

He started his career with Hindustan Lever. That’s where he cut his teeth in marketing for the first six years. Thereafter he moved to delve into the exciting world of advertising and no Agency was good enough for him; so he started his own – REDIFFUSION in 1973.

Arun is the Chairman of Rediffusion DY&R in India, but more importantly also Chairman of DY&R Wunderman, Asia Pacific and it is out of choice that he is based in India, but in charge of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Philippines, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, China, India, Australia and New Zealand for both DY&R the agency and the Wunderman network. He is also on the board of Y&R USA and on the board of DY&R agency companies in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Korea and also a WPP Director on the board of LG Ad. Incorporated in Korea.

Waler Saldanha had humble beginnings in the industry . He started at the level of Secretary/Steno at J Walter Thompson Co. (JWT) in March 1951.Was appointed Assistant Executive 6 months later.In 1953 was assigned the responsibility of assessing the feasibility of establishing a JWT Branch in Ceylon (no Sri Lanka). Later that year, within a period of 6 months, established from scratch, JWT’s Ceylon Branch.

In 1958 left JWT, to join Everest Advertising as Senior Accounts Executive. In 1959/60 joined Ayaz Peerbhoy and a few others from Everest Advertising to set up Marketing Advertising Associates (MAA). In 1963 joined Aiyars Advertising & Marketing as Senior Account Executive and was appointed on the Board a few months later following collaboration with LPE (London Press Exchange), at that time Europe’s largest Agency.

In March 1972 alongwith 13 others from Aiyars were prepared to throw in their lot with him, and so, Chaitra Advertising Pvt Lt was born on March 27, 1972. Chaitra tied up with Leo Burnett, Chicago in 1991 following a four years ‘honeymoon’ period, when they acquired a 10% stake in the company

Currently, amongst many activities Mr Saldanha has set up the Asian Institute of Communication & Research at Neral near Matheran for about 200 Residential Students. This institute is being funded by Mr Saldanha and represents his contribution to the Profession, the Industry and Society from whom he has received so much.

Gerson da Cunha is credited with mobilising advertising agencies to help social causes. He has served as Advisor, Communications in the Ministry of Civil Aviation & Tourism, Information & Broadcasting and Health & Family Welfare at various times since 1968.

A B Sc from Bombay University. Five years a journalist in the Press Trust of India-Reuters; 25 years in marketing and advertising in Lintas India and Hindustan Lever, the last ten as head of Lintas.

He worked for 10 years in the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Latin America and New York in development communications and public information.

Has long served as communications advisor to, and on assignment for various Ministries of the Government of India; two years as CEO of Bombay First, a city renewal project. Now actively involved with civil society programmes, notably in the citizen movement AGNI (Action for good Governance and Networking in India).

Mohammed Khan began his career as a copywriter in London 37 years ago. On his return to India he served as Creative Director at daCunha and MCM. Subsequently he founded Rediffusion and was also instrumental in setting up Contract. He then went on to start Enterprise, now Enterprise Nexus, a part of the Lowe Lintas & Partners network.

Mohammed Khan has won over a hundred national and international awards including a Clio for three successive years. He was also the first Indian to serve on the Clio Awards Jury and has represented India on various international juries.

Mr A G Krishnamurthy, founder of Mudra and MICA.

Mr Krishnamurthy’s dynamic career mixes all the ingredients of a corporate adventure. Starting out with Calico Mills in 1968, he moved to their Advertising Agency, Shilpi, as an Account Executive.

In 1976 he moved to Reliance as their Advertising Manager, and four years later founded Mudra Communications. Mudra’s two major brands, Vimal Fabrics and Rasna Soft Drink Concentrate have been nurtured by him from infancy to their current status as two of India’s leading and most recognised brands. Many more have followed since.

In 1991 he set up the Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad (MICA), the only advertising institute of its kind in Asia, to feed the growing Indian advertising industry with trained talent.

May 20 1940 – joined as Assistant in the Editorial Department of J Walter Thompson Company (Eastern) Limited in Bombay.

Resigned from HTA after 32 years of service.

Promoted R K Swamy Advertising Associates Pvt Ltd in 1973 and became Chairman of R K SWAMY/BBDO Advertising Pvt Ltd.

Mr Swamy has fashioned and influenced the development of two advertising agencies in his career. The first part of his career was fully devoted to the development of JWT/HTA. The second part of his career has been devoted to the development of R K SWAMY/BBDO.

The successes of both organisations stand testimony to his leadership and entrepreneurial abilities.

Ravi Gupta was a leading light of the Indian advertising industry and the founder of Trikaya Grey Advertising India Ltd.

A mining engineer from University of Wales, Cardiff. Ravi Gupta began his tryst with advertising in 1963, when he joined Ulka. He set up Trikaya advertising in 1977 and joined hands with Grey Inc., New York in 1988. As managing director, he was responsible for turning it into the sixth largest agency with a turnover of around Rs 200 crores in twenty years.

Well known in the industry for his innovations in advertising. Ravi Gupta pioneered the corporate and lifestyle genres of adverting in India. The “Happy days are here again.” campaign which introduced lifestyle advertising made Thums Up an instant success.

Among the widely acclaimed creative campaigns of Trikaya Grey are Thums Up, Mauritius Tourism, arvind Mills, Gujarat Ambuja, Ruf and Tuf jeans & Dunlop Spectrawide. He introduced advertising for new product categories like moulded luggage (Aristocrat) and fire extinguishers (Ceasefire). His comprehension of how to extract the most out of media enabled the agency to win several awards for campaigns in media innovations. Akai and the Lalbhai Group number among these.

In 1994, A&M voted him advertising Man of the Year. He was also inducted by the Calcutta AD Club into the advertising Hall of fame.

Subroto Sengupta’s career spanned 40 years in developing advertising campaigns for many of the best-known brands of consumer products, consumer durables and industrial products.

He was one of the founder Directors of Clarion Advertising. He retired from Clarion in 1983 as Chief Executive and Executive Vice-Chairman. Before joining Clarion, he worked for D J Keymer Advertising Agency (which later became O&M). He was also associated with communications for Nirodh from its inception; and until 1986 was a consultant of the John Hopkins University, Population Communication Services, Baltimore, USA.

A post graduate in Economics from Calcutta University Prof. Sengupta later graduated from the Advanced Management Programme (AMP). He was a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad from 1970-74 and later, as visiting professor, held the STC Chair of Marketing at IIMA from 1974- 78.

Professor Sengupta has authored the pioneering book "Cases in Advertising and Communications Management in India” and more recently, the best-selling title “Brand Positioning: Strategies for Competition Advantage".

M K Khanna was the Chief Executive of Hindustan Thompson, India’s largest advertising, market research and public relations organisation. He was a Senior Vice President – International and area Director – South Asia of J Walter Thompson Company. He was also named Senior Partner of Walter Thompson Worldwide. In 1992 he was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in Calcutta. He is a Past President of the Advertising Agencies Association of India.

Mr Khanna started his professional life in market research with SSC&B, New York. An Economics Honours graduate, he obtained his MBA from New York University.

Sylvester da Cunha is the Chairman and Managing Director, daCunha Associates Pvt Ltd (founded in 1969). He is a graduate (BA Economics) of Bombay University with Fellowship in Mass Communication from Princeton University, USA. He worked as Advertising Executive, LA, Stronchs Advertising, London, Joint Managing Director, Advertising & Sales Promotion Co. (1955- 69), Consultant in communications for World Bank, UNICEF and W.H.O. in Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, Zambia, Geneva and India.; An acclaimed Advertising columnist for many years in "Economic Time" and “Business India”.

In a career spanning more than 30 years, Alyque Padamsee has had many ‘firsts’ to his credit. Among them, the honour of being the first – and as yet the only – Indian to be voted into the ‘International Clio Hall of Fame’. He won this recognition for his film on handicapped children, the first Indian film to get a Clio statuette.

Starting his career in advertising with J Walter Thompson, Alyque Padamsee joined Lintas where he moved from Film Executive to copy Chief to Creative

Controller and, in 1980, Chief Executive. Under his leadership the agency had grown to be the No.1 advertising agency in the country. He won the “Communicator of The Year” Award in 1985 and has made award-winning films on family planning, anti-dowry, national integration and anti-cancer (his Anti- Cancer film won the Lintas Golden Pencil Award for the most creative advertising in the Lintas network of 45 countries in 1992.

Better known as Mani Ayer he led Ogilvy & Mather, India, since 1974. He began his career in advertising in 1959 as a trainee with S H Benson. After a serious of quick moves which included an assignment with S H Benson, London, Manager, Madras and later Manager of the Calcutta office, he was elected to the Board of Directors in 1970.

With the merger of S H Benson and Ogilvy & Mather, Mani Ayer was posted to Ogilvy & Mather Melbourne, in 1972. He returned to Bombay as Managing Director, India in 1974.

Over the years, Mani’s position as a leader in the industry and one of the most successful managers in advertising, has been unquestioned. His colleagues in New York and London often call him “Super Mani” – a well-deserved accolade. To his Indian colleagues his leadership is inspirational and at all times encourages civilised behaviour. His acumen in the business of advertising is unquestioned and widely acknowledged.

K Kurian has been in journalism, advertising and teaching. Wrote a weekly column on advertising and marketing for 15 years. Recipient of the ISA-Khatau Gold Medal 1980 for outstanding contribution to advertising.

He was founder and chairman of Radeus Advertising was credited with the creation of such iconic campaigns as Amul Chocolates (I think I’m just right for Amul Chocolates), Limca (Lime ‘n’ Lemoni Limca; The thirst choice, etc.) Kurian and Radeus also played a significant role in building the brand of the government owned Life Insurance Corporation.

Bal Mundkur began his advertising career on January 1, 1951 in D J Keymer, Bombay. He founded Ulka Advertising (‘Meteor’ in Sanskrit), on January 1, 1961. Ulka was no.4 on the agency league table when it was sold to the Interpublic Group UK. He relocated to Goa in 1995.

Bal Mundkur’s skills in mobilising funds for public causes have helped to finance the building of the Cerebral Palsy Unit at the Crippled Children’s Orthopedic Hospital, to revive the Asiatic Society Library and to resolve the Afghan Memorial Church, all in Mumbai.

Subhas Ghosal joined J. Walter Thompson Company Bombay as an Executive Trainee in 1945. He was elected to the Board of Directors in 1957 and became Chief Executive of Hindustan Thompson in 1974.

He was a Founder-Member and President of Advertising Club, Calcutta. He was President of the Advertising Agencies Association of India, during the years 1977-78 and 1978-79.He was awarded the ISA-Khatau Gold Medal as Advertising Man of the Year in 1968 and was the first to be elected to the Hall of Fame, Advertising Club, Calcutta in 1980.