AD Agencies
Abhimanyu Khedkar appointed MD & head of office at Leo Burnett Mumbai
MUMBAI: Leo Burnett has handed the Mumbai reins to one of its own. Abhimanyu Khedkar has been elevated to managing director and head of office, Mumbai, capping a steady, decade-long rise within the agency and marking a new chapter for the creative powerhouse in India’s advertising capital.
Khedkar said he was happy to begin his new role at Leo Burnett. The promotion follows a rapid sequence of senior leadership positions, most recently as managing partner. Over the years, he has moved through the ranks from senior vice president to executive vice president, executive director and then managing partner, building a reputation for blending brand thinking with business results.
His career spans more than two decades across some of the country’s most influential agencies. Before Leo Burnett, Khedkar worked with BBH India as brand partner and spent over three years at O&M, where he handled the Marico business. Earlier stints include roles at Publicis Ambience and Percept H, where he began his journey in advertising.
With deep experience across FMCG brands, client leadership and agency management, Khedkar’s appointment signals continuity with momentum. For Leo Burnett Mumbai, it is a familiar face stepping into the corner office, and for the industry, another reminder that patience and persistence can still pay off in big ways.
AD Agencies
Fevicol releases its last ad campaign by the late Piyush Pandey
The adhesive brand’s last campaign by the late advertising legend Piyush Pandey turns an everyday Indian obsession into a quietly powerful metaphor
MUMBAI: Fevicol has never needed much of a plot. A sticky bond, a wry observation, a truth that every Indian instantly recognises — that has always been enough. “Kursi Pe Nazar,” the brand’s latest television commercial, is no different. And yet it carries a weight that no previous Fevicol film has had to bear: it is the last one its creator, the advertising legend Piyush Pandey, will ever make.
The film, released on Tuesday by Pidilite Industries, fixes its gaze on the kursi — the chair — and what it means in Indian life. Not just as a piece of furniture, but as a currency of ambition, a vessel of authority, and a source of quiet social drama that plays out in every home, office and institution across the country. Who sits in the chair, who waits for it, and who eyes it hungrily from across the room: the film transforms this sharply observed cultural truth into a narrative that is, in the best Fevicol tradition, funny, warm and instantly familiar.
The campaign was Pandey’s idea. He discussed it in detail with the team before his death, but did not live to see it shot. Prasoon Pandey, director at Corcoise Films who helmed the commercial, said the team needed five months to find its footing before they felt ready to shoot. “This was the toughest film ever for all of us,” he said. “It was Piyush’s idea, magical as always.”
The emotional weight of that responsibility was not lost on the team at Ogilvy India, which created the campaign. Kainaz Karmakar and Harshad Rajadhyaksha, group chief creative officers at Ogilvy India, described the process as “a pilgrimage of sorts, on the path that Piyush created not just for Ogilvy, but for our entire profession.”
Sudhanshu Vats, managing director of Pidilite Industries, said the film was rooted in a distinctly Indian insight. “The ‘kursi’ symbolises aspiration, transition, and ambition,” he said. “Piyush Pandey had an extraordinary ability to elevate such everyday observations into iconic storytelling for Fevicol. This film carries that legacy forward.”
That legacy is considerable. Over several decades, Pandey’s partnership with Fevicol produced some of the most beloved advertising in Indian history, building the brand into something rare: a household name that people actively enjoy watching sell to them.
“Kursi Pe Nazar” does not try to be a tribute. It simply tries to be a great Fevicol film. By most measures, it succeeds — which is, in the end, the most fitting send-off of all.
