MAM
O&M’s Sinha wins the WPP Atticus Grand Prix yet again
MUMBAI: In a rare feat of intellectual achievement, Ogilvy & Mather India Discovery vice president Kunal Sinha has won the top honour in WPP Group plc’s annual Atticus awards for original published thinking in the marketing services, for the second time.
His entry — The Future of Technology and its Impact on our Lives — was chosen unanimously by the judges – HSBC group general manager marketing Peter Stringham, Market Leader editor Judie Lannon and Sunday Times business editor William Lewis – as the best contribution. He will receive the specially minted Atticus statuette and a cash award of $10,000 from WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell in London, later in the year.
Sinha’s thesis is an exercise in anticipating the future, as it explores the web of interconnections between technology creators, users and forecasters, to uncover those possibilities that hold the key to making technology brands successful.
All this leads to a driver-model for technology brands. He last won the Grand Prix in 1996 for his paper — Communication Effect – A Reevaluation of Beliefs — and is the only person in WPP history to have won it twice. Sinha’s previous Grand Prix was won when he was with Thompson Social.
Ogilvy Worldwide chairman Shelly Lazarus said, “Beating 285 entries from all across WPP to win the Atticus Grand Prix is no easy feat, but to have done it twice is extraordinary. It speaks of the brilliant work Kunal and the Ogilvy India Discovery team does every day. With this award they bring glory to all of us at Ogilvy.”
Ogilvy India and South Asia CEO John Goodman said, “This is an amazing achievement and brings great honour on Ogilvy India. We are truly proud of his achievement.”
This is a second for Ogilvy India as well. In 1999, Venkitachalam Balasubramanium (now with Group M – ATG/MCI) had picked up the Grand Prix.
O&M India was the only WPP agency in India to be recognised at the Atticus Awards this year. It won a Certificate of Merit in the corporate category, for its compilation of award-winning communication effectiveness case studies – Effective Ogilvy. Incidentally, this casebook was edited by Sinha and designed by Sameer Sojwal and Yogesh Pradhan.
Ogilvy Discovery is the account planning, consumer insight and knowledge management unit at O&M India.
Brands
Google nears Nvidia in race for world’s most valuable company
Market cap gap narrows as Google hits $4.65 trillion, Nvidia at $4.86 trillion.
MUMBAI: In the AI gold rush, even the giants are sprinting and Google is suddenly gaining ground. Google is rapidly closing in on Nvidia in the race to become the world’s most valuable publicly listed company, with the gap between the two narrowing sharply amid diverging stock momentum. The tech giant’s market capitalisation has surged to around $4.65 trillion, following a more than 140 per cent rise in its share price over the past year.
That rally has added over $2.6 trillion in value in just 12 months, including nearly $900 billion since January alone. Its stock recently hovered at $381.80, slipping marginally by 0.04 per cent, but still reflecting strong upward momentum.
Nvidia, meanwhile, continues to hold the top spot with a valuation of approximately $4.86 trillion. The chipmaker crossed the $5 trillion milestone in October last year and peaked at $5.27 trillion on 27 April. However, its shares have largely plateaued over the past six months, rising just 0.2 per cent recently to $199.99.
The contrast in trajectories is striking. While Nvidia has seen relatively flat movement, Google has gained over 36 per cent in the same six-month period. Barron’s estimates suggest that if current trends hold, the valuation gap could shrink to as little as $190 million by the time Nvidia reports its first-quarter earnings on 20 May.
Daily momentum paints a similar picture. Nvidia recorded average daily gains of about 0.66 per cent last month, compared to Google’s stronger 1.42 per cent, an edge that could prove decisive in the short term.
Driving Google’s resurgence is its aggressive push into artificial intelligence across its ecosystem, from search and YouTube to cloud computing. The company has already invested $144 billion in capital expenditure over the past two years and plans to deploy a further $490 billion over the next two.
Its cloud division is also gathering pace. Google Cloud reported an order backlog of nearly $220 billion in the latest quarter, with total backlog touching a record $462 billion, around half of which is expected to be realised within two years. The company’s entry into chip sales is also beginning to factor into its growth narrative.
The last time Google briefly topped the S&P 500 by market value was in February 2016, when it edged past Apple for just two days. This time, the stakes and the numbers are far higher.
At the heart of the contest lies a single force: artificial intelligence. As both companies pour billions into infrastructure, chips and platforms, the leaderboard is no longer just about size, it is about who can scale the future faster.
