MAM
Edelman gets on board Kunal Arora and Deepak Agarwal
MUMBAI: To further bolster its digital business in India, Edelman has announced two strategic leadership appointments.
It has got on-board Kunal Arora as the national director who will be responsible for the company’s digital business in India, overseeing business planning and development and will lead a team of digital experts across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.
He will be based in Gurgaon and report to Edelman Digital APACMEA president Gavin Coombes and Edelman India COO Rakesh Thukral.
Arora comes with over 16 years of experience in the digital advertising business. Before joining Edelman, he was the business lead at Hungama Digital Services for six years.
To further impetus to the company’s digital creative offerings in India, it has also appointed Deepak Agarwal as group creative director, digital. He will be based in Mumbai, heading an all-India digital creative team, reporting to Arora. In his role, he will lead the charge in elevating the digital creative for both content development and digital builds.
Agarwal, in his last role, served as Executive Creative Director, Copy M&C SAATCHI-i – the direct marketing & digital division of M&C SAATCHI.
“The addition of Kunal and Deepak is critical to our plans to broaden our Digital offering in India across creative, strategy and build,” said Thukral. “Kunal’s digital advertising experience and Deepak’s award-winning creative expertise will strengthen our capabilities to deliver truly integrated campaigns to our clients.”
“Kunal and Deepak bring unique and extensive experience in a variety of fields, from advertising to direct marketing to digital to social media, and we look forward to making the most of all of their expertise together with their passion and commitment to excellence as we build the Edelman Digital brand and business across India,” said Coombes.
He further adds: “These two skill leaders will work with the strong talent base we already have on the ground and our over 1,000 digital professionals throughout the world for the benefit of our clients.”
Brands
Zscaler, Airtel launch India AI Cyber Research Centre
New hub to boost cyber resilience and trusted AI use
NEW DELHI: As India’s digital engine roars ahead, so do the risks riding shotgun. In response, Zscaler, Inc. and Bharti Airtel have joined hands to launch the AI and Cyber Threat Research Center – India, a national initiative aimed at strengthening the country’s cyber defences and accelerating responsible AI adoption.
The centre is designed as a multi stakeholder platform that brings together industry, government and academia. Its mission is clear: protect critical sectors such as telecom, banking and energy, shield everyday digital users, and future proof India’s fast expanding online ecosystem.
India has long been a major innovation hub for Zscaler, with a substantial portion of its cyber research talent based here. With this new centre, that footprint evolves into a national collaboration engine. The idea is simple but ambitious, build in India, for India, and help power the country’s journey towards a secure and digitally self reliant future.
The timing is telling. India is building digital systems at population scale, not just enterprise scale. That scale has widened the attack surface dramatically. At the same time, cyber criminals and nation state actors are deploying AI to scan, probe and exploit vulnerabilities in minutes.
Zscaler’s research arm, ThreatLabz India, reports millions of infiltration attempts every month. These include espionage campaigns linked to regional geopolitical tensions, 1.2 million intrusion attempts from 20,000 sources targeting 58 Indian digital entities, and a rise in zero day exploit attempts across multiple industries.
In such an environment, perimeter based security models are struggling to keep pace. The new centre aims to push a shift towards secure by design systems and Zero Trust architecture.
Its strategy rests on four pillars: protect through real time intelligence, remediate by working directly with government agencies, facilitate adoption of AI driven security and Zero Trust frameworks, and build a stronger cybersecurity talent pipeline through specialised certifications.
As founding members, Zscaler and Airtel will combine global threat intelligence with local network visibility. Zscaler will deploy a dedicated India focused research team and draw insights from its Zero Trust Exchange platform, which processes over 500 billion daily transactions worldwide. Airtel, meanwhile, will contribute deep visibility into IoT and mobile traffic, helping detect suspicious activity faster and coordinate response across the ecosystem.
Bharti Airtel executive vice chairman Gopal Vittal, said the partnership extends Airtel’s commitment to safeguarding customers and the nation’s digital fabric. He added that the collaboration would address challenges unique to the Indian market and encourage secure and confident digital engagement.
Zscaler chief executive, chairman and founder Jay Chaudhry, said India’s digital ambition cannot be secured with legacy firewalls and VPNs. He noted that a modern Zero Trust architecture is essential for a hyper connected world and that the new centre would harness the scale of Zscaler’s global security cloud while empowering a new generation of Indian cyber defenders.
Additional members from critical public and private sectors are expected to join the initiative in the coming months, expanding its scope and deepening collaboration.
In a world where threats travel at machine speed, India’s answer is to think faster, collaborate wider and build smarter.
