Nikhil is a seasoned leader with strong management experience across consumer internet, technology and SaaS companies. Nikhil has held leadership roles at global companies and startups like Google, Intuit, Reliance Jio, Housing.com and Yatra.com. In a career spanning over 20 years, Nikhil has successfully scaled businesses, built iconic brands and led high performance teams, in both turnaround and high-growth situations.
Board Member Category: Speaker
BHARAT KHATRI
Bharat Khatri is the Chief Digital Officer, APAC at Omnicom Media Group, one of the world’s leading global media agency networks, where he leads digital marketing operations, productization, commercials and governance efforts for the network in this region. With a future-forward and holistic approach to digital marketing, he spotlights his focus on leveraging technology to drive efficiency and creativity in digital marketing at scale.
A strategic digital marketer with more than a decade of agile experience in digital and sales across the EMENA & APAC markets, Bharat is a young thought leader with a knack for driving efficiency and creativity at scale in his projects. He comes with strong business acumen to leverage data, technology, and real actionable insights into lucrative solutions for brands. Armed with end-to-end expertise in delivering campaigns with programmatic stack development, omnichannel activation, performance marketing, and media commerce, Bharat loves accelerating the growth story of clients and partners.
Before joining the Omnicom Media Group, Bharat was leading operations for Xaxis in India as the Country Head, where he was responsible for managing P&L for the biggest agency programmatic desk in the country, growing the business exponentially over the past five years, fostering partnerships with leading technology, media and measurement players to drive a digital-first strategy and mentoring the next generation of digital leaders.
He started his career with Serco as an Account Coordinator and later on moved to Wipro and Exponential, diversifying his portfolio to media planning, buying, P&L Management, research and development.
A true advocate for digital transformation and passionate about applications of artificial intelligence that enables accurate digital planning across all addressable channels, Bharat loves helping brands transform the marketing message into a welcome occurrence rather than an unwanted intrusion with his data-driven approach.
A complete foodie at heart, Bharat enjoys cooking in his past time. Digital detox and good food make his weekends perfect. As an avid mountaineer, he sees practical parallels between what it takes to be on an expedition and being in the media advertising industry. The determination, perseverance and out-of-the-box thinking required to take on mountaineering fuels him to find purpose in work and life.
SHASHWAT SHARMA
Mr. Shashwat Sharma is the Chief Marketing Officer of Bharti Airtel Limited. Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 18 countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the company ranks amongst the top 3 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers.
Shashwat is 39 years of age, is PGP from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and an Engineer from Delhi College of Engineering.
Shashwat joined Bharti Airtel in 2018 as a Chief Brand Officer and was elevated to Chief Marketing Officer in 2019. Shashwat has been at the helm of the Airtel Thanks program, and building differentiation in airtel product catalogues across mobility, broadband and digital services.
He has been a consumer marketer with Hindustan Unilever limited in varied roles from Dove, to Lakme, Oral Care and leading the launch of HUL’s ayurvedic brand – Lever Ayush.
NIKHITA ARORA
CRAIG WEINGARTEN
JOHN GREGORY
ANJALI KRISHNAN
Anjali Krishnan is the Head of Media for Mondelez in India and Bangladesh. She comes close to 15 years of experience in advertising and marketing, working with both agency as well as corporate organizations with expertise in Media Strategy, Business Planning & Analytics, Research, Brand Development and handling P&L.
Prior to Mondelez India, she was associated with well-known brands like Virgin Mobile India, TVS Motor Company, as well has leading agencies like Group M and Lintas, across key clients such as Hindustan Unilever, ITC and many more.
Anjali is passionate about the subject of clinical psychology especially in the realm of neurobehavioral and neuro-developmental science. Her other hobbies include running, blogging and painting.
ROSHAN ABBAS
Roshan Abbas got on stage when he was 4 years old, and never stepped away from the spotlight. He is an entrepreneur, author, film & theatre director, TV and radio host, podcaster, producer, angel investor but most of all, a storyteller. He now attempts to shine the spotlight and provide a platform to others by connecting people to opportunities. A stalwart in the Indian media industry, he has always been ahead of the curve – pioneering innovation across platforms and mediums.
Roshan founded and led Encompass (now VMLY&R COMMERCE ENCOMPASS) as Managing Director into becoming India’s largest, most awarded experiential marketing agency . He was an initial investor in and continues to be a mentor-partner at The Glitch, now India’s leading creative agency, and at Chtrbox (acquired by Qyou Media), India’s forerunner in influencer marketing. As an angel investor at GSF, he has made strategic investments in over 40 startups with successful exits in Little Eye Labs to Facebook,Slintel sold to Sixth Sense, Practo etc.
Roshan has won seven national-level awards for TV and radio.Through RAP, his production house, he produces and curates content and events driven by great writers. Roshan co-founded Kommune – a creator collective that believes every story deserves a stage. He helped conceptualise Spokenfest, Asia’s largest spoken word festival which brings together performers from across the world for storytelling through any medium. He is currently the President of EEMA, the consortium of event management and entertainment company leaders of the country.
Roshan has channelled the magic of stories to create experiences, build businesses, change mindsets, and invoke curiosity. Roshan continues to inspire by sharing his life lessons with anyone looking to discover a unique voice! To surmise Roshan Abbas in a phrase, as he puts it himself, he is a Storyteller and a Story-Seller.
ARJUN KOLADY
Arjun has spent 15 years 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.
