MAM
BBDO India hires Sidheshwar Sharma to head Blackberry biz
MUMBAI: BBDO India has appointed Sidheshwar Sharma as the regional business director on the Blackberry regional and local business.
Sharma will be based in Mumbai and will report to BBDO India CEO Ajai Jhala.
Sharma moves in from Grey Worldwide where he was working as client services director and managing the Reliance 3G business.
Jhala said, “We are excited to have Sid on board. He fully subscribes to our mantra of ‘Create Acts Not Ads‘. We agreed on terms during his ‘action‘ vacation in Zanskar, a perfect prelude to his taking over the reigns of the Blackberry regional and India businesses”.
Sharma comes in with close to 10 years of experience in the business of brands and ideas. Prior to joining Grey, he had also worked with Ogilvy & Mather and McCann Erickson. He has worked on clients like Cadbury Dairy Milk, Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk, Dove Shampoo, Kissan and Kodak.
MAM
Gurpreet Singh named President of DishTV Alumni Network
Former Dish TV executive to lead community building and collaboration.
MUMBAI: Back to the dish, but this time it’s about connections, not channels Gurpreet Singh is returning to familiar territory with a new mandate that swaps subscribers for relationships. Singh has been appointed President of the DishTV Alumni Network, a move aimed at strengthening ties among former employees and building a more engaged professional community around the Dish TV ecosystem. The initiative reflects a growing trend among large organisations to formalise alumni networks as platforms for collaboration, mentorship and business opportunities.
The appointment draws on Singh’s deep-rooted history with Dish TV, where he held multiple leadership roles over nearly a decade. As National Business Head between June 2019 and September 2020, he oversaw profit and loss as well as operations, managing revenues of Rs 6,000 crore and leading a team of around 1,250 employees across the country. His tenure included working alongside two regional business heads and 16 circle heads, underscoring the scale of operations he handled.
Prior to that, Singh served as Executive Vice President and National Head for Sales and Revenue from 2016 to 2019, and earlier as Senior Vice President and National Head for Sales and Revenue. He also briefly led international operations as Country Head for Sri Lanka, further expanding his exposure across markets.
His broader career spans leadership roles across telecom and consumer businesses, including a stint as Chief Operating Officer at Bharti Airtel’s Malawi operations, senior leadership roles at Reliance Communications, and earlier positions at Hindustan Sanitaryware and Kodak India, where he spent over a decade.
In his new role, Singh is expected to focus on reconnecting former employees, fostering collaboration, and building a structured alumni ecosystem that leverages shared experience and industry networks. As companies increasingly recognise the long-term value of their extended workforce, the DishTV Alumni Network appears set to turn nostalgia into a strategic asset, one connection at a time.
