Digital
Are digital metrics telling the truth? BFSI leaders take a closer look
MUMBAI: The numbers look good—but are they real? That’s the question banking and financial services marketers will confront at a closed-door roundtable in Mumbai on 12th December. Titled “Breaking the Myths: The Truth About Digital ROI”, the session aims to strip away the gloss from dashboard metrics and expose the distortions lurking beneath: invalid traffic, inflated engagements and unverified conversions that make it nearly impossible to tell what’s actually working.
In an industry grappling with rising acquisition costs and increasingly complex customer journeys, the stakes have never been higher. Yet too many campaigns are measured by surface-level vanity metrics (impressions, clicks, reach) that tell marketers little about genuine performance. The roundtable will challenge that orthodoxy, pushing participants to dig deeper and focus on validated, down-the-funnel outcomes that translate spend into measurable returns.
The event, organised by Indian Television dot com, will tackle three core questions: why top-line metrics so often fail to reflect real performance, how to separate authentic engagement from artificial amplification, and what transparency and validation should look like across every stage of the digital funnel.
The speaker lineup brings together marketing leaders from across BFSI.
Suresh Gajendran, deputy general manager of marketing and branding at Bank of Baroda, will be joined by Anand Bhatia, chief data officer and analytics at HDB Financial Services; Himanshu Jha, lead for integrated media at AB Capital; Harshita Hemnani, deputy vice-president of marketing at Bharti AXA Life; Prashant Choudhari, head of marketing at Fino Payments Bank; Ankita Sharma, associate vice-president of marketing at Generali Central General Insurance; Rupinderjit Singh, head of tech product and digital business at Kiwi Insurance; Ayush Kumar, vice-president of marketing at Appreciate; Ravi Kiran, associate vice-president of growth and strategy at mFilterIt; and Jyoti Kalra, business unit head at mFilterIt.
The session will be moderated by Bitupan Baruah, managing partner for digital transformation at Essence Mediacom by WPP Media.
The partnership with mFilterIt, a firm that specialises in trust and accuracy in digital measurement, underscores the event’s focus on transparency. The format is designed to encourage candid, peer-driven conversation—the kind that doesn’t happen when vendors are in the room.
For an industry that has long celebrated digital transformation, the event poses an uncomfortable question: what if the metrics we’ve been chasing were never fit for purpose? Attendees will leave with frameworks, not fluff—and a clearer view of where their money is actually going.
Digital
OpenAI’s Stargate lead Peter Hoeschele exits with two senior leaders
Trio behind compute push set to join new startup amid leadership reshuffle
SAN FRANCISCO: Peter Hoeschele, a key figure behind OpenAI’s early Stargate data centre initiative, has exited the company, according to a report by The Information.
The departure is part of a broader leadership shift, with two other senior executives, Shamez Hemani and Anuj Saharan, also set to leave in the coming days. All three are expected to join the same new startup, although details about the venture remain under wraps.
The trio played a central role in OpenAI’s Stargate effort, an initiative aimed at building large-scale data centre capacity in-house to reduce reliance on external infrastructure providers. Their exits mark a notable moment for the company’s compute strategy as it continues to scale rapidly.
OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement to The Information, “We’re grateful for the contributions Peter, Shamez, and Anuj have made to OpenAI and wish them the very best in what comes next.” The company also pointed to the recent appointment of Sachin Katti to lead its industrial compute organisation, signalling continuity in its infrastructure roadmap.
OpenAI has indicated that it does not plan to directly replace Hoeschele’s role, suggesting a possible restructuring of responsibilities within the team.
As competition intensifies in the race to build next-generation AI systems, leadership changes in core infrastructure teams are likely to draw close attention. For now, the spotlight shifts to what this departing trio builds next, and how OpenAI adapts as it scales its ambitions.
