MAM
Ashutosh Gupta appointed Coursera MD for India and Asia Pacific region
MUMBAI: From scaling up social networks to leading the charge in online learning, Ashutosh Gupta is now scripting a new chapter at the intersection of tech and education. Veteran tech executive Ashutosh Gupta has been appointed managing director for India & Asia Pacific at Coursera, taking the reins in July 2025 as the edtech giant strengthens its footprint across the region.
Gupta’s move to Coursera comes after a prolific career spanning over two decades, including a 10-year stint at Linkedin, where he most recently served as country manager for India. Under his leadership, Linkedin’s India user base crossed 105 million, making it the platform’s fastest-growing region globally. He also championed vernacular accessibility, launching features in Hindi to widen the platform’s appeal.
Prior to Linkedin, Gupta held senior leadership roles at Google, Cognizant, Covansys, and Infosys, focusing on sales, operations, and strategic partnerships across North America and India. Most recently, he served as Operating Partner at Avataar Venture Partners, advising portfolio companies on scaling sustainably and navigating IPO-readiness.
Armed with degrees from IIT-BHU (Chemical Engineering) and IIM Lucknow (PGDM in Finance & Marketing), Gupta brings a rare blend of technical rigour and market acumen. At Coursera, he’s expected to drive growth, forge regional alliances, and champion lifelong learning across India and the Asia Pacific, a market witnessing a sharp surge in demand for upskilling and remote education.
Commenting on his new role, Gupta has emphasised the need for “technology that respects intelligence and drives real impact”, signalling a shift from platform-centric models to learner-first strategies in edtech.
With education becoming the next frontier of digital disruption, Coursera has made a strategic bet on a leader who knows how to scale with purpose. From connecting professionals on Linkedin to helping them upskill on Coursera, Gupta’s journey is now a full circle in empowerment.
Brands
Creative Intelligence: Using AI to Predict Which Ads Will Actually Convert
Priyanka Aeron, Director & Co-founder of Thrive Global AI
MUMBAI: In a heavily populated digital landscape, simply being creative with your advertising will not guarantee that your ad will be successful. In fact, brands today are producing more content than ever. However, very little of that results in actual engagement or sales. However, Creative Intelligence, powered by AI, is fundamentally transforming the advertising industry.
Creative Intelligence utilizes data, machine learning, and statistical behavioral insights to analyze and predict how well a creative asset will perform prior to it being published. Therefore, marketers no longer have to rely on either their gut instincts or post-campaign analytics for making informed decisions before production. That said, AI-powered creative intelligence greatly improves results and decreases wasted dollars spent.
Moving Beyond Guesswork
In the past, making ads was a mix of gut feeling, experience, and A/B testing. These methods were useful, but reactive by nature. People have already spent their budgets by the time the results are looked at. AI models can find patterns that are linked to higher engagement and conversion rates by looking at huge datasets. These datasets can include things like past campaign performance, audience behavior, and visual elements like color, composition, and facial expressions. This helps marketers guess which ads will do well even before they go live.
Decoding What Truly Drives Conversions
AI-powered creative intelligence allows for an evaluation of advertisements that is not limited to the basic data but also explores the elements of an effective advertisement through subtle reactions; clarity and directness of the ad message and how well the ad captures audience’s attention in the first three seconds. AI can also provide insights into the successful use of advertisements directed to human faces, which connect through eye contact based on media channels, and how advertisements that utilize shorter but clear calls to action may produce more clicks from certain populations. The insights, provided through AI, provide marketers with the ability to think beyond creating more advertising material and additionally create more effective ad campaigns that actually convert.
Personalization at Scale
Consumers expect relevance more than ever. Irrelevant mass messaging is not going to work in a society inundated with information. Hyper-personalization, using AI, allows companies to create content that suits individual segments within their target markets based on their demographics, interests, and behaviors. Rather than having one single message that aims to reach everyone, brands can have many versions of their messages tailored to each segment within the market. Such flexibility is what makes campaigns successful nowadays.
Faster Iteration, Better Results
Another advantage to using AI in creative decision-making is speed. Companies must improvise because their campaign cycles are shorter than ever before, and having the ability to iterate rapidly is more important than it has ever been. There is no greater way to do this work than through AI, as new technologies give brands the ability to test multiple creative avenues and figure out which ones are working well. This reduces a lot of the testing that companies would otherwise have to do and makes the process faster.
With AI, brands can also make creative changes in real-time during a campaign, allowing the, to make vital decisions and adjust their creatives, rather than waiting out. This allows for faster adaptability, well-tested campaigns and reduced lost ad spend.
The Human-AI Collaboration
Even though AI is capable of performing certain tasks, its purpose is not to eliminate human creativity. Successful campaigns require human collaboration with computer intellect since both complement each other. While computers are capable of dealing with massive amounts of information, discovering patterns, and providing predictions, humans are the one to inject stories and emotions into campaigns.
The Future of Advertising
As the complexity of advertising becomes harder with the passage of time, Creative Intelligence will play a significant role in helping marketers formulate a strategic approach. The yardstick that will set standards for determining whether a marketing firm has fulfilled its responsibilities will be the forecasting of future outcomes, as well as personalized content and optimization of creative elements in real-time. In contrast to the existing scenario where the campaigns remain fixed, these campaigns will be capable of adjusting themselves according to the customer interacting with the brand, as well as other trends on social media channels. This will enable brands to offer customers an engaging experience that will exceed expectations. The biggest hurdle marketers will face will be finding ways to utilize these capabilities without compromising branding and enhancing the creativity of the team involved.
