MAM
Aritra Chaudhuri is Grey’s new senior creative head
MUMBAI: Grey group India has appointed Aritra Chaudhuri as new senior creative director in its Bangalore office. Chaudhuri will be responsible for driving the agency’s creative mandate for its impressive mix of clients based out of Bangalore.
Grey group India chief creative officer Sandipan Bhattacharyya said, “While a lot is said about the need for experimental, medium-bending work in our industry, very few actually walk the talk. Aritra displays that rare knack for exploring the new and finding ways to create pop culture that makes brands famous”
He joins with 10 years of extensive experience in various sectors including strategic planning, advertising, integrated campaign design, trans media storytelling, digital marketing, social media, art direction and graphic design.
Before joining Grey, he has worked with Leo Burnett as the creative director, where he was responsible for creating a yardstick and setting up the creative team in Delhi. Brands he handled there includes Olx, Snapdeal, Bacardi and SBI Cards. Enormous, Commonwealth and Mccann Worldgroup, Ogilvy and Mather, JWT, TBWA are the other agencies he worked with. He has been creatively associated with various brands like SBI, Zaffran, Baskin n Robbins, Chevrolet, The Economist, Sony, Taco Bell, Tropicana, Mountain Dew, National Geographic, History Channel, Pedigree, Adidas, etc.
Chaudhuri added, “Grey is changing, in terms of its people, systems and work culture. I look forward to the new challenges and do some intriguing work in a city that is intriguing in itself as far as business is concerned”
MAM
Smytten appoints Shishir Varma as CEO of Pulseai Research
Rebranded AI platform scales with 150 plus clients and 30 million users.
MUMBAI: In a world obsessed with what consumers say, Smytten is betting on what they actually do. The company has appointed Shishir Varma as chief executive officer of Pulseai Research, signalling a sharper push into AI-led, behaviour-driven consumer insights. The move comes as Smytten rebrands its insights vertical from Smytten PulseAI to Pulseai Research, marking a shift away from traditional, project-based research towards a more continuous, intelligence-led model.
Varma brings over 30 years of global experience across APAC markets, including India, China and Japan. Most recently managing director, Insights at Kantar Japan, he has built and scaled consumer insight businesses across geographies, including playing a key role in establishing Millward Brown in India. His mandate now: turn Pulseai into a category-defining platform in a space still dominated by surveys and static reports.
The pitch is straightforward but ambitious. Instead of relying on claimed responses, Pulseai Research taps into observed behaviour leveraging Smytten’s ecosystem of 30 million users built over a decade of product discovery, trials and purchases. The idea is to close the long-standing gap between what consumers claim and how they actually behave.
The numbers suggest early traction. In under 18 months, the platform has onboarded over 150 enterprise clients across sectors, pointing to growing demand for faster, more reliable alternatives to legacy research models.
Under the hood, the platform blends behavioural data with AI and large language model-led analysis to deliver real-time sentiment tracking, scalable qualitative insights, faster quantitative studies and always-on brand intelligence. In practical terms, that means compressing research timelines from weeks to days without sacrificing depth.
The ambition extends beyond FMCG. Pulseai Research is positioning itself as a cross-category intelligence layer, spanning auto, education, gadgets and emerging consumer segments anywhere behaviour-rich data can sharpen decision-making.
For Smytten, the leadership hire is less about optics and more about direction. With Varma at the helm, the company is leaning into a simple but powerful premise: in the age of AI, insight isn’t just about asking better questions, it’s about watching more closely.
