Advisory Category: Advisory Board 2023

Arjun has spent almost 2 decades in the digital advertising ecosystem in India. Building the Indian businesses of global companies from scratch is his forte and Spotify is his third ‘start-up’ after Google and Facebook. Arjun leads the ads monetization strategy for Spotify in India. After helping put digital front and centre at Google, and mobile front and centre at Facebook, he now aims to put digital audio front and centre for advertisers in India. He is focussed on education, evangelisation, and inspiration around audio for brands and agencies in India.

Lavin Punjabi is an ad tech entrepreneur dedicated to restoring trust between users and digital ads through privacy-first technology. With a proven track record in developing user-centric ad tech products, Lavin has consistently driven innovation and added substantial value to the industry. As the Co-Founder and CEO of Affinity, a company often referred to as the ‘Columbus of New Media,’ Lavin spearheads a portfolio of ad network and SaaS businesses. The ad networks focus on branding and performance solutions for advertisers across unique formats and placements (mCanvas, VEVE, SitePlug and YieldSolutions). The SaaS businesses include AdOpsOne, NucleusLinks and Opinary, the latter of which was acquired in 2023. These ventures operate on a global scale, spanning the US, UK, Europe, India, Indonesia, and China. Lavin’s profound involvement in the ad tech industry since 2004, marked by his pioneering of privacy-first technology and product-led impact on the future of digital advertising, has established him as a recognized industry expert.

Kapil was part of the core team that built and grew Amazon Ads in India. He is a tenured Amazonian leader with stints across multiple businesses. He currently leads the Growth Ads business including seller ads. He has a rich and diverse experience in Advertising, Banking, Manufacturing and Consulting. He is an alumni of IIT Madras and IIM, Calcutta and was associated with RBS and GE in the past.

Prabhvir is a highly experienced business leader with more than 15 years of digital advertising & technology experience. He currently serves as Senior Director, Samsung Ads India, a leading provider of Advanced TV advertising solutions.

As a founding executive of Samsung Ads India, Prabh was instrumental in setting up the Indian arm of the business. Armed with a deep understanding of ad tech, media and viewership preferences Prabh is tasked with driving commercial expansion and adoption of CTV in the region. Prior to Samsung Ads Prabh pioneered programmatic advertising at Google, headed up search and mobile at Mindshare and worked at multiple technology driven media solution companies. He was recently named in Exchange4media’s Digital 40 under 40.

Kushal Sanghvi is every bit the Media Evangelist. A penchant for advertising, media and communications drove him to this industry where he has thrived since the last 22 years.

A large part of his innings has been with media companies and digital/ tech. He sees New Media as an integral part of brand expansion. Globally and across Asia his roles with iconic companies such as Reliance Group, Fremantle Media, Havas Media, The Times of India Group has led to unparalleled intelligence in Media thereby creating marketing success stories for those brands and has been pivotal to scale business and operations for those companies. Someone who has been part of various start up teams and then gone ahead to make them successful ventures in terms of people, it’s clients, defining processes and of course scaling and running those businesses.

At his capacity as Managing Director, South Asia at Havas Digital which he founded in India and went ahead to have teams across the region, he also led the company for its social media across a global committee that was headquartered at Paris and its earliest times also started out Mobext the mobile advertising solutions agency under Havas too.

He has essayed roles in Print, Television, OOH, Content and the invention of interactive television in India for the pioneering show ‘Indian Idol’ for Sony Television in the country. Having worked with over 400 brands in his career till now he always willing to learn more and that’s what keeps him going daily. Has also been involved with the Govt of India too and helped them in various facets of marketing, brand and technology.

Being a creative thinker with a passion for creating products, content, platforms and solutions his most poignant creation being the inception of Rediff.com as a founder member, a tipping point in his career graph.

In his role at the Reliance ADA Group he leads all digital transformation across all Reliance group companies working closely with the CXO’s and has incorporated a digital marketing services company for the Group.

An MBA from NMIMS, he loves playing mentor and terms people management as a stepping stone to achieve targets and has been an active guest lecturer in leading institutes across India: the various IIM’s, IIT’s, NMIMS, SP Jain, JBIMS, ISME, MET, Rizvi, Wellingkar, MICA, ISB, Indira Institute, Somaiya, Nirma Institute, XLRI, FMS, Symbiosis to name a few. He has done his doctorate in consumer behaviour with regards to the impact of the various roles of media and communication triggers. He has also been part of platforms like Teach for India and in his spare time also teaches at various NGO’s, slums and villages across the country as he believes that education is a two way process and a country like India that has its largest population in its youth and also in smaller cities needs to all be trained and envisioned for a better India.

He is receipent of over 50 awards locally and internationally in the domain of advertising, marketing, media, content, digital marketing and technology and has been voted by various tabloids, publications, media like Exchange4media, Afaqs, Campaign, World Brand Congress as being among the top 10 digital marketers in the country for many years now. Afaqs has featured him as among the top 50 newsmakers in media in 2014 and 2015.

Kushal is a regular speaker at various media and marketing events and platforms such as FICCI, IAMAI, Ad Club, Afaqs, E4M,TFMA, NASSCOM, MIPCOM, Campaign, Adobe, ICOM Global, CII in India and globally to name a few where he loves to champion the cause of media and garner new talent into this industry. Recently in 2014 was one of the only 2 Indians to speak at Websummit, Ireland which is the largest digital marketing festivals in the world that attracts over 70,000 people. Has also spoken regularly at the largest mobile marketing platform at World Mobile Congress at Barcelona in 2014, 2015, and 2016 which has over 1,00,000 people attend in and he was one of the few Indian’s to speak there. He has been part of the jury for various marketing, media, content, television, advertising awards in the last over 8 years. He is also on the board of some leading international marketing and media associations like CEBIT, TFMA, Ad Tech, ICOM Global, GIIFFA, DMAI to name a few. He has also been involved in mentoring various start-ups especially in the mobile, ad-tech, data- analytics, social-media, e-commerce, gaming, media space and has also invested into some of the same ventures too.

In his spare time Kushal loves to read, write, paint and sculpt, dabble in cooking, watch movies, travel and explore the world, meet new people and explore new cultures, hike, listen to all sorts of world and Indian music. He loves all that’s tech and is often always the first to try new technology, gadgets and more. He is a car freak and loves to drive, often dabbles in a game of badminton and tries to keep fit with being in nature and doing his walks or a good swim.