AD Agencies
HSBC appoints L&K Saatchi & Saatchi as its communication partner
MUMBAI: HSBC has awarded its communication mandate to L&K Saatchi & Saatchi for the re-launch of its premier offering in India. HSBC Premier is the group’s premium financial services product, offering exclusive banking services to high net worth individuals.
The agency will be taking forward the globally integrated campaign for the re-launch of Premier. The agency’s Mumbai office will handle the account.
The new positioning for HSBC premier is ‘Personal support, for your Personal Economy’.
L&K Saatchi & Saatchi CEO and managing partner Anil Nair said, “We are extremely pleased to work with HSBC in India. HSBC has given us the mandate on the ‘premier’ business which is very challenging and exciting. We look forward to creating interesting work in collaboration with the HSBC team in India.”
The campaign took an inside-out approach for the re-launch, starting with HSBC’s own relationship managers to better understand the real challenges that their clients face.
Extensive research, consultation and interviews with both relationship managers and clients revealed the insight that high net worth individuals across the world have one major characteristic in common: they each have their own individual, highly personal economy.
Interconnected to all aspects of their lives – whether home, family, work, experiences or passions – their personal economies are always with them, always changing and needing care and attention in order to grow.
MUMBAI: Mar-tech network Wondrlab Network is in talks to acquire advertising major Madison World, according to media reports, in a move that could reshape India’s agency landscape.
In a statement shared with Social Samosa, Wondrlab Network founder and CEO Saurabh Varma, confirmed that the group is actively evaluating acquisition opportunities but declined to confirm any specific transaction.
“We have consistently stated that Wondrlab is building for scale, and acquisitions remain an important part of that strategy. We are in discussions with multiple companies across capabilities that strengthen our platform-first, full-funnel marketing and technology offering. Any development will be communicated at the appropriate time,” Varma said.
Wondrlab has pursued acquisitions as part of an ambitious plan to buy 26 agencies across three phases. In 2025, it completed its seventh acquisition, underscoring its appetite for inorganic growth.
According to reports, Madison founder Sam Balsara is seeking around Rs 1,000 crore for the agency. If the Wondrlab deal goes through, it would rank as the largest acquisition of an Indian agency by another Indian agency.
Wondrlab was launched in November 2020 by Saurabh Varma, Vandana Varma, and Rakesh Hinduja. Its first acquisition followed swiftly with the December 2020 purchase of Amit Akali’s creative shop, What’s Your Problem.
Since then, the group has steadily expanded its footprint. It acquired influencer marketing firm Opportune and performance marketing agency Neon in 2022. In 2023, it bought Salesforce consultancy and data analytics firm Cymetrix, alongside Poland-based WebTalk, marking its entry into Europe. It later added influencer marketing agency OPA and, last year, took a majority stake in BigStep Technologies, a generative AI and cloud-native software firm.
Madison, meanwhile, has long been a target for global advertising groups. Over the years, it has drawn interest from WPP, Publicis Groupe and Dentsu. In May 2025, Havas was reported to be the frontrunner, with an offer of about Rs 700 crore for a majority stake.
Earlier talks with WPP in 2015, when Madison was valued at roughly Rs 500 crore, collapsed over valuation and equity differences. Discussions with Publicis and Dentsu also failed to yield a deal.
