MAM
Happy Creative wins creative mandate of Maiyas foods & Amante
MUMBAI: Bengaluru-based Happy Creative Services has bagged the creative mandate of two brands – Maiyas foods and Amante.
Both businesses have been won without a formal pitch process.
Maiya‘s is a processed foods initiative by Dr. Sadananda Maiya – the man behind the now Norwegian owned MTR enterprise.
Meanwhile, Amante is a lingerie brand owned by MAS holdings group based in Sri Lanka.
The Maiya‘s brand is planning to launch ready to eat and ready to cook packaged foods spanning a variety of a 100 snacks and dishes in the country. The agency has been chosen to communicate the launch of new products.
Maiya said, “While we are about preserving traditional foods, we are also about innovation in the way we make sure it lasts in all its purity after being packaged. In that way we are a cross between the past and the future. We chose Happy because we wanted a young agency would could understand and communicate the same.”
Happy Creative Services CEO Kartik Iyer said, “It‘s great to be working with Mr. Maiya again. Some of us at Happy have had the opportunity to work with him in our previous jobs. He is a very inspiring person and an unconventional thinker himself. It‘s an honor to be chosen to launch his own personal brand.”
“Happy Creative Services have been appointed as our advertising agency because we believe they have the ability to inject unshakable awareness and loyalty for Amanté into the Indian fine lingerie consumer‘s mind, benefitting both,” Amanté CEO John Chiramel said.
Happy Creative Services COO Siddhartha Roy added, “We were awarded the Amante business on the basis of our experience in the fashion-apparel space, our flair for media-agnostic innovative thinking and our expertise in building brands ground-up. That‘s what makes this win extra special for us.”
MAM
VML India lands two finalist spots at Cairns Hatchlings 2026
The Mumbai agency is back in Australia with two teams, a UN brief and 24 hours to impress
MUMBAI: VML India is heading to Australia again. The Mumbai-based creative agency has secured two finalist spots at the Cairns Hatchlings 2026 competition, one in the Audio category and one in Design, making it the only Indian agency to have reached the finals in both editions of the contest since its launch in 2025.
Four people will make the trip. Senior copywriter Shilpi Dey and senior art director Raj Thakkar will compete in Audio. Art directors Shabbir and Shruti Negi will go head-to-head with the world’s best in Design. The finals take place at the Cairns Convention Centre from 13th May, culminating in an awards ceremony on 15th May.
The work that got them there is worth examining. For the Audio category, Dey and Thakkar tackled a brief for LIVE LIKE MMAD with a campaign called Inner Voice, Interrupted. Using spatial audio techniques, the campaign recreates the overwhelming self-doubt that descends after a long workday, physically panning negative thoughts left and right before cutting the noise entirely to reveal a confident inner voice. Strategically targeted at commuters via Spotify during evening rush hours, the campaign reframes the hours after work as an opportunity for personal growth and charitable action.
For the Design category, Shabbir and Negi worked on a brief for Canteen’s Bandanna Day, a campaign highlighting how cancer pushes teenagers out of their own defining moments. Using a pixelated design language to create stark contrast between a blurred world of isolation and a focused world of connection, the campaign, titled The Flipside of Cancer, shows teenagers fading into the background of birthdays, skateparks and school proms. As a Canteen bandanna appears, the blur flips and the teenager snaps back into sharp focus.
Kalpesh Patankar, group chief creative officer of VML India, made no attempt to disguise his satisfaction. “We are immensely proud to see our teams consistently excel on the Cairns Hatchlings platform since its inception,” he said. “They have masterfully tackled challenging briefs across diverse categories, demonstrating both layered storytelling and a unique creative approach. This exceptional teamwork is truly inspiring.”
Dey and Thakkar, returning to the finals after last year’s run, were candid about the demands of the audio medium. “It’s one of the most demanding mediums, where we only have a few seconds to capture a listener’s world with sound alone, so absolute clarity is essential,” they said. “The true measure of creative work is its ability to create positive change, and our audio submission was made to help those who need it most while encouraging people to silence the inner voices that hold them back.”
Shabbir and Negi, competing in Design for the first time, described the experience as “a completely different beast.” “We see it as an opportunity to showcase our expertise, raise the bar, and challenge ourselves in new ways, while also learning from creative minds from across the globe,” they said.
In Australia, the four finalists will face a live 24-hour brief from the United Nations before presenting in a live pitch session. Twenty-four hours, one brief, one shot. VML India has been here before. It knows exactly what is at stake.
