MAM
Clensta onboards Mamaearth’s Ashish Mishra as co-founder and chief business officer
Mumbai: Personal care brand Clensta has announced the addition of industry leader Ashish Mishra to its C-Suite. Mishra comes on board as Clensta’s co-founder and chief business officer (CBO), who along with founder Puneet Gupta, is set to scale the brand to greater heights.
Mishra brings into his new role, a wealth of experience from a career spanning almost two decades. Mishra headed the General Trade, Modern Trade, HORECA, Institutional, International & Alternate and Salons business at MamaEarth (Honasa Consumer Limited). Under his leadership, the company clocked around 2500 per cent growth, with Mishra driving revenue of more than Rs 500 cr. a year which he grew from close to Rs 2 cr. a month, within three years and led a team of more than 1,500 people. Mishra has also been associated with market-leading institutions such as Reliance, Tata Group, VLCC, and Russian Medicom through his extensive career, where he has consistently demonstrated his dynamic and result-oriented approach.
At Clensta, he will head the retail and online sales channels, along with playing a significant role in driving the growth of the International, Institutional, and Alternate channels thereby enhancing the brand’s reach and presence across markets. Ashish’s experience in this industry will be instrumental in driving strategic decisions at the company and will also contribute towards the Company’s growth capital raising initiatives.
“I am excited to be given this opportunity to work closely with Puneet and his talented team. IIT Delhi backed Clensta has already disrupted the personal care space with its customer-centric approach and innovative offerings and I am confident that together, we will scale this brand to greater heights in the years to come.” said Mishra.
“We are thrilled to have Ashish on board who will add tremendous value to Clensta with his experience as an industry leader for almost 20 years. His rich experience and proven track record of scaling D2C businesses make him an invaluable addition to our team. More than anything, he shares Clensta’s vision to disrupt the personal care landscape in India and across the world through our range of effective, unique and affordable products. Clensta has so far worked on owning the product value chain and with Ashish on board, we are looking at a hockey stick growth by owning the distribution value chain,” said Clensta founder Puneet Gupta.
Clensta recently joined hands with the actress Parineeti Chopra as an investor, partner and brand ambassador. Since its inception, Clensta has secured funding from notable investors like the Royal Family of UAE, EXIM bank and various other angel platforms, which it is pumping back into the business to expand the inventory and customer base.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
