Dhaval Patel joins Starcom as senior director, buying, for ecommerce and quick-commerce

MUMBAI: Musical chairs in Indian media buying continue apace. Dhaval Patel, until recently associate vice-president, marketplace and partnerships, India at WPP Media, has landed at Starcom as senior director, buying, tasked with the agency’s ecommerce and quick-commerce charge. The move, announced on LinkedIn, marks another notch in a career built almost entirely on ad sales and media buying across television, digital and now the fast-growing quick-commerce space.

Patel’s exit from WPP Media caps a two-year-four-month run there, one heavy on scale rather than subtlety. He handled strategic planning and buying across marquee properties, the IPL, the ICC World Cup, the Champions Trophy, FIFA 2026, the PKL, Kaun Banega Crorepati, elections coverage, Shark Tank, the Australian Open, Wimbledon, esports, the ISL, the WPL, the Women’s World Cup, the Commonwealth Games, the union budget and the Olympics, a fixture list that reads like a broadcaster’s dream and a buyer’s nightmare in equal measure. His portfolio spanned digital, CTV, TV, OTT, DOOH, print and radio, with client billings ranging between Rs 10 million and Rs 100 million dollars, though on LinkedIn Patel himself pegs the figure in dollar terms, for marquee names including the ABG Group, the JSW Group, Lauritz and Knudsen, Sony Pictures, Motul, Tata Mutual Fund, Dr Reddy’s, UltraTech, Castrol, the ICICI Group, JioStar, Angel One, Nykaa, Crompton Greaves and Kellogg’s.

Before WPP Media, Patel cut his teeth in programmatic at Times Internet, driving revenue in the west markets and onboarding new accounts. Earlier still came a productive stretch at ZEE5 as ad sales manager, where he hit 187 per cent of his annual sales target and ranked first nationally for impact contribution, growing the customer base by 111 per cent and landing seven new enterprise clients in a single fiscal year, working accounts such as Hindustan Unilever, P&G, Godrej Consumer, L’Oréal, Hershey’s, Nivea, Kellogg’s and Volkswagen. Stints at Vserv, Star TV Network, Sun TV Network and AIDEM Ventures fill out a résumé that has quietly clocked more than a decade in Indian media sales and buying.

Patel credited Peeyush Sharma, Janvi Mehta, Sejal Shah and Rathi Gangappa for backing the move, and thanked Jyotsna Prabhat for a smooth onboarding at Starcom. The appointment, effective September 2026, is based in Mumbai and comes at a moment when Publicis Groupe’s Starcom is pushing hard into ecommerce and quick-commerce buying, a segment where India’s retail media dollars are shifting fastest. For Patel, it is less a career pivot than a natural extension, swapping cricket and content for carts and quick delivery.