Brands
Anita Kotwani joins Zoo Media as senior partner, growth
Former WPP and Dentsu leader to drive expansion in AI led era
MUMBAI: Zoo Media has strengthened its leadership bench with the appointment of Anita Kotwani as senior partner, growth, as the independent network sharpens its focus on scale and integration in an AI-driven landscape.
Kotwani steps into the role with a formidable track record, having spent 16 years at WPP Media and five years at Dentsu, where she served as chief client officer. Across both stints, she built a reputation for steering growth, unifying capabilities and delivering large-scale transformation across creative, media and customer experience.
Zoo Media co-founder Suveer Bajaj said, “Zoo Media was built on the belief that independents, when structured right, can outperform holding company networks on both agility and outcomes. Anita has operated at the highest levels of global systems and chosen to channel that mastery into an independent.”
He added, “Her entry as a partner is not symbolic, it is conviction. She is here to help define our future and accelerate the next phase of growth.”
Kotwani’s mandate spans the network’s portfolio, including FoxyMoron, The Rabbit Hole, Pollen, The Starter Labs and Phosphene, with a focus on weaving them into a cohesive, growth-led ecosystem. The brief is clear: blend creative, media, data and technology into a seamless offering that feels less like separate silos and more like a single, well-oiled machine.
Zoo Media co-founder Pratik Gupta said, “Anita has always believed that strategy without execution is hallucination. Across WPP and Dentsu, she proved she could deliver both at scale.”
He added, “What she brings now is a tested understanding of how clients measure value and how agencies must evolve in a technology-first world. As a partner, she will embed that intelligence into Zoo Media’s DNA.”
Zoo Media senior partner growth Anita Kotwani said, “My years at WPP and Dentsu gave me a blueprint of how scale, integration and client value are built. But the future of advertising will be defined by speed, intelligence and seamless orchestration across creative, media and technology.”
She added, “Zoo Media represents that future. I am here to architect growth with the founders and prove that agility paired with institutional mastery is the winning model for the AI era.”
Beyond India, Kotwani will also work closely with the founders to drive international expansion, leveraging Zoo Media’s presence in New York and Dubai to position it as a global independent contender.
As networks grow larger, Zoo Media is placing its bet on being smarter, faster and more integrated, with Kotwani now helping steer that ambition into its next phase.
Brands
Samsung certifies 1,000 Maharashtra students in AI and coding
The South Korean electronics giant marks its first large-scale skilling push in the state, with women making up nearly half the national programme’s enrolment
PUNE: Samsung has put 1,000 students in Maharashtra through a certified training programme in artificial intelligence and coding, the largest such drive the South Korean electronics company has run in the state and a signal that corporate India’s skilling ambitions are moving well beyond the boardroom brochure.
The certifications were awarded under Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC), the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility programme, which launched in India in 2022 with the stated aim of democratising access to future-technology education. The 1,000 graduates were drawn from four institutions: 127 from Savitribai Phule Pune University, 373 from Pimpri Chinchwad University, 250 from D.Y. Patil University’s Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology and 250 from Anjuman-I-Islam’s Kalsekar Technical Campus. All completed training in either AI or coding and programming, the two disciplines Samsung has identified as the critical pillars of the digital economy.
The programme does not stop at technical training. Soft-skills development and career-readiness modules are baked into the curriculum, a deliberate attempt to close the gap between what universities teach and what employers actually want.
“India’s digital growth story will ultimately be shaped by the quality of its talent pipeline,” said Shubham Mukherjee, head of CSR and corporate communications at Samsung Southwest Asia. “As technologies like AI move from the periphery to the core of industries, skilling must evolve from basic training to building real-world capability. This milestone in Maharashtra reflects how industry and academia can come together to create a future-ready workforce that is both globally competitive and locally relevant.”
The Maharashtra drive sits within a rapidly scaling national effort. Samsung Innovation Campus trained 20,000 young people across India in 2025, hitting its stated target for the year. Women account for 48 per cent of national enrolments, a figure the company cites as evidence of its push for an inclusive technology ecosystem. The programme is implemented in partnership with the Electronics Sector Skills Council of India and the Telecom Sector Skill Council.
Samsung, which is marking 30 years in India this year, runs SIC alongside two other initiatives, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow and Samsung DOST, as part of a broader effort to build what it calls a generation of innovators with both the technical depth and the problem-solving mindset to thrive in a fast-moving digital world.
A thousand certified students is a tidy headline. Whether they find jobs that match their new skills is the harder question, and the one that will ultimately determine whether corporate skilling programmes like this one are genuine pipelines or well-photographed gestures.
