India’s top brand builders are coming together to crack the Gen Z code

MUMBAI: They can spot a forced campaign from a mile away. They screenshot the cringe and meme it into oblivion. They have psychological ad-blockers built in before they even pick up their phones. Indian Gen Z is, by some distance, the most marketing-resistant consumer generation in history, and on 18 June, some of India’s sharpest brand minds are gathering in Mumbai to figure out what on earth to do about it.

Indiantelevision.com’s Brand Wizards roundtable, themed The GenZ Blueprint: Building Brands For India’s Most Sceptical Generation, brings together eight marketers and founders who have actually cracked the code with younger Indian consumers. The event runs from 4pm to 7pm at The Novotel Mumbai International Airport, Floral Ballroom, opening with high tea and registration before the main roundtable discussion from 5pm to 6:30pm, followed by networking. The roundtable will be moderated by Anil Wanvari, founder and editor-in-chief of the Indiantelevision.com group.

The premise is blunt. The old Indian marketing playbook, massive billboard, prime-time IPL spot, top-tier Bollywood face, is broken. Gen Z looks at that exact multi-crore campaign and asks one devastating question: how much did they pay them to say that? They want brands that speak like a peer on a WhatsApp group chat, not a corporation broadcasting from a 40th-floor boardroom. Authenticity, raw transparency and immediate utility are the new currency of loyalty. Everything else gets swiped past.

The speaker lineup is built around people who have earned that loyalty the hard way.

Adil Lokhandwala, creative head at Kinetic EV and founder and creative director of branding studio BIRTHDAY, brings 15 years of building brands at the intersection of culture, design, music and mobility. His working philosophy is simple: brands do not stay relevant by chasing trends, they stay relevant by creating culture.

Akshay Deshmukh, head of marketing at demi-fine jewellery brand Palmonas, has spent over eight years scaling D2C and digital-first consumer brands, with stints at Mensa Brands and Merkle Sokrati. His focus is on building authentic brand narratives that resonate with younger consumers in an increasingly sceptical marketplace.

Bhuman Dani, founder and chief executive of WickedGud, has built one of India’s most talked-about better-for-you food brands since launching in 2021, backed by Orios Venture Partners, Titan Capital and Shilpa Shetty, and made famous by a turn on Shark Tank India Season 2. A BITS Pilani and INSEAD alumnus, Dani previously founded TGL Co., the premium tea and coffee startup acquired by the Wadia Group.

Gayatri Chona, founder of Phab, India’s first macro-first protein snack brand, comes with over a decade of nutrition counselling experience and a founder’s conviction that healthy eating fails when it is too hard to sustain. She built Phab to fix that, and built a Gen Z following in the process.

Prajakta Rathe, deputy general manager for brand-led growth and performance at Tira Beauty under Reliance Retail, has spent 16 years across BookMyShow, SUGAR Cosmetics and Good Glamm Group. At Tira, she is focused on how Gen Z’s path to purchase is reshaping beauty marketplace commerce in India.

Rohan Gandotra, co-founder and chief operating officer of Mumbai-based fashion and lifestyle brand Ammarzo, brings the perspective of a D2C fashion builder who also owns the Rajasthan Rangers franchise in the Tennis Premier League. Few speakers will arrive with a more eclectic view of what builds brand affinity with young Indians.

Sayantani Basu, head of marketing at Jumboking Foods, brings over 15 years across advertising, CRM and loyalty programmes, with a sharp focus on data-driven strategies and direct-channel growth.

Rounding out the panel is Stuti Sethi, brand lead at Plum BodyLovin’, who has spent nearly eight years building one of India’s most playful bath and body brands, combining creativity, product development and business-first thinking in equal measure.

Together they represent the full breadth of India’s D2C and consumer brand landscape, food, beauty, fashion, jewellery, mobility and beyond. The one thing they share is a proven ability to make Gen Z actually care.

The questions the roundtable will wrestle with are not abstract. How do you build legacy when loyalty shifts at the speed of a scroll? How do you earn trust from a generation that treats every brand claim as guilty until proven innocent? How do you market, at all, to people who hate being marketed to?

On 18 June, eight people who have done exactly that will attempt to answer.