AD Agencies
Sunil Lulla will bring in a new dimension in our offering to clients: Nirvik Singh
When indiantelevision.com wrote about Sunil Lulla taking up a leadership position in Grey India, it did surprise many in the industry. Very few knew or recollected that Lulla’s roots have been in advertising: he was an account director at HTA (now JWT India) and had also taken the role of regional client servicing director on the Colgate Palmolive business with Y&R New York.
The announcement of his joining saw the departure of president & CEO Jishnu Sen. Lulla is taking over at Grey India at a time when it is in the midst of a grow-grow phase. On the global front, Grey was ranked as the agency of the year by adage.com for its revenue growth, client retention and the fact that it won almost all of the client pitches it made in 2013.
In India, Grey, the advertising network of the Grey Group, acquired a majority stake in rural and marketing communications services provider RC&M just as the year was drawing to a close.
It has done well on the awards front too, both in traditional and digital advertising. It can be noted that Grey India picked up a Gold Lion at the Cannes this year in the Press category for the work done for P&G’s Duracell Batteries.
Indiantelevision.com’s Priyanka Nair got in touch with Grey Group Asia Pacific CEO Nirvik Singh to chat with him about the leadership change in India, and what he expects going forward.
Excerpts:
With Sunil Lulla coming on board, what are the areas in which Grey India is looking at expanding?
We have been investing in India continually and with RC&M coming under our fold, I believe we have the right expertise and capabilities currently across the full marketing spectrum. Sunil Lulla would play a critical role in integrating and strengthening our offering.
In the 30 years of experience that Sunil Lulla has, he has been associated with the broadcast side of the business most. How do you think his expertise will help in the growth of Grey India?
With his 30 years of working experience, Sunil brings with him a wealth of knowledge from the media side of the business, not just broadcast. From our conversations, he has shown that he knows the heavily fragmented media landscape in South Asia in depth. By having him leading our operations in India, he is able to add a new dimension in our offering to our clients.
How has the year 2014 been so far for Grey India?
2014 has been really good for Grey Group, not just in India but across Asia Pacific as well. We are seeing clients in the market increasing their marketing spend with us, both regional and local clients. All in all, I expect India to be a really strong performer at year end. Malvika Mehra (National Creative Director) and team have been performing consistently as well – they have brought home yet another Gold Lion from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. This is their second year in a row they are doing so.
What are the plans lined up for the digital side of your business?
Sudhir Nair (Senior Vice President, Head of Grey Digital India) will be working closely with Sunil on this, but I must say our digital team has been stellar in their creative solutions and output (using Twitter to launch a car and YouTube for a test drive). Digital is definitely a big part of the picture and the continued investment in talent and capabilities is top of our priorities.
What is at top of your wish list for Grey India?
Win more Cannes Lions next year!
Till when will Jishnu Sen be with Grey India? Could you elaborate on the experience of working with him?
It has been a truly great journey – I have seen him grow into the CEO’s role and he is a great chap to work with.
AD Agencies
Kevin Vaz opens FICCI-EY report with a declaration: India’s M&E industry set to breach Rs 3 trillion mark by 2027
In a keynote address at the FICCI-EY report launch, Kevin Vaz says sport, AI and the connected TV boom are driving a multi-screen revolution with no signs of slowing
MUMBAI: India’s media and entertainment industry is growing faster than the economy, reshaping global benchmarks and is on course to blow past Rs 3 trillion by 2027. That was the headline message from Kevin Vaz, chairman of the FICCI Media and Entertainment Committee and chief executive of entertainment at JioStar, who delivered the opening keynote at the launch of the FICCI-EY Media and Entertainment Report 2026 in Mumbai on Monday. He did not waste much time on caveats.
The industry hit Rs 2.78 trillion in 2025, outpacing GDP per capita growth and surpassing even last year’s bullish forecasts. Vaz described the year in three words: scale, convergence, transformation. The numbers, he suggested, were only half the story. The other half was how that growth was happening.
Digital has become the industry’s largest segment, driven by advertising, subscriptions and commerce. But Vaz was quick to puncture the familiar narrative of digital killing everything else. India, he argued, is not an either-or market. It is an AND market. Connected TV is surging. Linear television, mobile, films and print are all still expanding. AVGC, the animation, visual effects, gaming and comics sector, is emerging as a serious growth engine, opening new storytelling formats and new global revenue streams. Nothing, he said, is replacing anything. Everything is reinforcing everything else.
Nowhere is that more vivid than in sport. In an on-demand world where audiences can watch anything, anytime, Indians still show up live. “Sports don’t fragment audiences,” Vaz said. “They unite them, just on different screens.” The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 made the point emphatically. During the final, JioHotstar delivered 72.5 million concurrent streams, a global record. Group chats exploded. Families renegotiated control of the television. Advertisers, Vaz noted with undisguised relish, stopped asking where audiences were and started asking how fast they could get in.
Cinema had its own landmark year. More than 1,900 films were released, with several crossing the Rs 1 billion mark. Dhurandhar was singled out as proof that Indian audiences will still turn up in large numbers for content that grips them. Live experiences, too, are getting bigger and more immersive, though Vaz suggested the surface has barely been scratched.
Then there is artificial intelligence, which he described as quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, reshaping everything. AI is enabling personalisation, efficiency and scale, but Vaz argued its deeper significance lies in what it is doing to creativity itself. He pointed to Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, billed as the world’s first AI-produced show, as evidence that the technology can amplify creative ambition rather than hollow it out. He also used the platform to call on Indian policymakers to engage seriously with the creative industry on AI and copyright, ensuring that creators are fairly compensated as the technology spreads.
The picture that emerges from the report, and from Vaz’s keynote, is of an industry that has stopped thinking of itself as a fast-growing emerging market and started thinking of itself as a global template. Scale, diversity and innovation, he said, are no longer in tension in India. They are coexisting, and the rest of the world is taking notes.
The Rs 3 trillion milestone is two years away. As the man who chairs the committee that shapes the industry’s policy agenda and runs the country’s most powerful entertainment platform, Vaz set the tone for the day with characteristic directness: India’s media business is not just chasing growth. It is deciding what the country talks about at dinner. That is a different kind of power altogether.
