MAM
CupShup promotes Nikshit Patani to VP – growth
Mumbai: CupShup, a full-service agency has promoted Nikshit Patani to the position of VP – growth. He has been associated with CupShup for over five years at different levels.
In his new role, Patani will be reporting to Cupshup co-founder Sourav Kumar and will be accountable for the overall growth of the agency and will be responsible for client relationship, retention programming, planning expansion strategy and more importantly people & process building across the organisation, said the statement.
“We are happy to have Nikshit in this new role. He deserves every bit of it, his passion and enthusiasm were palpable at the first meeting and is still intact till today,” said Sourav Kumar. “His vast experience of working across different ecosystems and his agency acumen will bring in better efficiency and add to the creative talent we have in the team.”
Patani joined CupShup in the year 2017 as an operations manager. He rose through the ranks strengthening operations, client servicing and account management.
He has expertise in BTL activations and offline advertising for 100+ brands and worked for industries that include FMCG, BFSI, fintech startups, consumer tech, ed-tech, med-tech and many more.
“I am thankful for Sourav’s trust in my abilities and vision,” said Nikshit Patani. “The journey has been phenomenal from an Ops Manager to now VP growth – CupShup has played a key role in my career graph, and I look forward to adding more to their growth as a company.”
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.
