MAM
Cheil Worldwide SW Asia powers up digital quotient
MUMBAI: Cheil Worldwide SW Asia announced the appointment of Avinash Joshi as media director, where he will be responsible for the agency’s social media practice.
Joshi is a digital marketing expert with over 15 years of experience in leveraging social insights, trends in emerging technology and human interaction to understand, explain, predict and influence consumer behaviour in digital, social and emerging channels.
Cheil Worldwide SW Asia COO Hari Krishnan said, “Avinash is an incredibly passionate yet methodical advocate of social media. His multi-faceted experience across project management, creative, technology and media will be immensely valuable for our clients at Cheil India.”
“While most of the digital verticals are headed by seasoned skill leaders at Cheil India, social media leadership had remained a gap area for us. With Avinash coming onboard, am sure, we will not just offer best in class social solutions but strengthen our overall digital offering to clients”, added Cheil Worldwide SW Asia senior VP & digital head Rajesh Bhatia.
Joshi joins from SapientNitro were he was serving as digital account director and social media lead-India, growing the practice through relationships in North America, Europe and APAC.
Over the years he has managed brands including Coca Cola – Burn, Sprite and Thums Up, Citibank India, Citibank US, Unilever – Lifebuoy & Lipton, Pernod Ricard – Chivas Regal & Blenders Pride, Yum – Taco Bell India, Fiat Chrysler – Fiat and Jeep India, Abbott, MetLife, Carlton and United Breweries, Lava International – Xolo, United Nations, UNICEF, United Nations Statistics Division, United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Development Coordination Office/Development Group and WHO, Red Cross (Thailand), National Statistical Office, Government of India, State Planning Commission, Government of Madhya Pradesh (India), HIV AIDs Data Hub, Asia Pacific among others.
Prior to SapientNitro, Joshi has worked with GutsGo, Avalon Information Systems, UNICEF DevInfo Support Group, Wisitech (formerly, Orient InfoSolutions) and Sunstar Communication Systems Ltd.
MAM
‘You packed my parachute’: Avinash Kaul’s farewell salutes Network18’s unsung thousands
The outgoing chief’s LinkedIn post skips the boardroom tributes and goes straight to the security guards, drivers and office boys who kept the machine running
MUMBAI: Most farewell posts by senior media executives follow a familiar script: gratitude to leadership, a nod to the team, a hint of what lies ahead. Avinash Kaul’s is not that post.
Writing on LinkedIn on his last day at Network18 Media & Investments, where he spent nearly 12 years rising to chief executive, Kaul bypassed the boardroom entirely and directed his most heartfelt words at the people furthest from it: the security guard who greeted him before the building was fully awake, the fleet staff who drove him to airports at ungodly hours, the office assistants, the housekeeping teams, and the administrators who, as he put it, “held ten thousand invisible threads so the rest of us could look organised.”
“You packed my parachute,” he wrote. “Every day. Without fanfare, recognition, or ever asking for it.”
It was a striking note from a man who leaves behind a considerable operational record. Kaul joined Network18 managing three channels and exits with responsibility for 20, alongside a publishing business, a growing connected television footprint, and what he says is the highest revenue and highest channel share in the group’s history. He was quick to deflect the credit. “Not because of me. Because of 4,000 people who showed up, every day, in every department, across the country.”
To content teams across India, he issued a reminder that carries some weight given the pressures Indian news media currently faces. “Keep being custodians of trust for 700 million people. That is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.”
To colleagues in revenue and ratings who found him relentless and hard to satisfy, he was unapologetic but generous. “There was never a single moment of ill intent in my heart. Everything I pushed you towards came from one belief – that you were stronger than you knew, and I was not willing to let you settle for less than your real capability.” Those who believed him, he said, flew. Those who did not taught him to be a better communicator. He was grateful to both.
On what comes next, he offered a hint wrapped in metaphor. Something is being built, he said, prepared for “the way you pack a bag before a long climb. Not out of restlessness. Out of readiness.”
In a media landscape that rarely pauses to acknowledge the people who keep the lights on, it was, at the very least, a different kind of goodbye.
