Chinmay Kelkar named director, media and integrated ecosystems, at Mars Snacking Asia

SINGAPORE: Corporate mergers rarely hand anyone a bigger sandbox this fast. Chinmay Kelkar has been appointed director, media and integrated ecosystems, at Mars Snacking Asia, a role that arrives courtesy of Mars’s tie-up with Kellanova and effectively doubles the categories under his watch. Where Kelkar previously worked across chocolate, gums, mints, fruity confectionery and pet care for North Asia, he now inherits cereals and salty snacks too, a portfolio expansion that turns a regional media brief into something closer to a full-blown FMCG ecosystem play.

Kelkar’s path to this point has run almost entirely through media agencies rather than client-side roles, which makes the Mars posting, his first as marketer rather than agency partner, a notable pivot. He joined Mars in February 2026 straight from WPP Media, where he spent seven months as senior vice-president, regional clients, in Singapore. Before that came four and a half years at EssenceMediacom, first as regional business lead from September 2021 and then, from January 2023, as head of transformation, based in Singapore throughout.

The Mediabrands chapter, spanning February to September 2021 as senior regional business director and October 2019 to September 2021 as regional business director, saw Kelkar run the ExxonMobil account across 11 markets in Asia Pacific and Oceania, leading account management, planning, buying and ad-ops teams across the region. But it is his seven-year run at MediaCom, much of it in China, that reads like the meat of the résumé. As planning director on Team P&G China from July 2016, Kelkar headed media strategy and ecommerce store management for the grooming category across Shanghai and Guangzhou, delivering 66 per cent higher media-led sales for Gillette on a budget cut of 19 per cent, and driving Braun and Gillette ecommerce sales to 238 per cent and 184 per cent of prior-year levels respectively. He also built China’s first branded VR ecommerce experience, for Gillette, and set up P&G China’s first dedicated live media command centre.

Kelkar’s career opened at Lodestar Universal, now part of Draft FCB Ulka, as a media planner working Tata Photon and Tata Nano, picking up a silver Emvie in 2010 and a bronze in 2011 along the way. He has since been named among the top 30 future leaders of Indian advertising by IMPACT and called out as a rising star on WPP’s global Procter & Gamble team, credentials that track neatly with a career built on wringing efficiency out of some of the toughest, most fragmented media markets in the world, China, India and the rest of Asia Pacific. On weekends, by his own account, he reviews video games, which is either an odd hobby for a media strategist or exactly the right one.