MAM
Kaff Appliances brings Nalin Kumar on board as COO to cook up its next growth recipe
MUMBAI: Leadership changes are usually corporate chess moves. But when the boardroom gets a seasoned operator with two decades of industry firepower, it’s more of a powerplay. Kaff Appliances, the premium kitchen appliance brand with a strong foothold in Indian homes, has appointed Nalin Kumar as its chief operating officer to stir up strategy, scale, and sizzle.
The New Delhi-based firm made the announcement this April, citing Kumar’s rich legacy in consumer durables and electronics—and his knack for turning operations into well-oiled machines. In his new role, Kumar will run point on streamlining Kaff’s national operations, while sharpening customer and partner experiences across metros and tier two towns alike.
“We are delighted to welcome Nalin Kumar to the Kaff leadership team. His deep industry knowledge and sharp operational acumen make him an ideal fit to lead our business into its next phase of growth,” said a company spokesperson.
Kumar has held senior roles at several top-tier appliance brands and has earned stripes in GTM strategy, channel expansion, and operational execution. Translation? He’s navigated market chaos, won channel loyalty, and survived product launches that probably gave other execs ulcers.
“I’m excited to be part of Kaff’s journey at such a pivotal time. The brand has a strong legacy in the Indian kitchen appliance market, and I look forward to working with the team to build on that momentum and deliver meaningful value to our customers and partners,” Kumar said.
His appointment comes at a time when Kaff is sharpening its product portfolio, doubling down on innovation, and extending its urban charm to India’s rapidly digitising small-town shoppers. Insiders suggest that Kumar’s onboarding signals a laser focus on operational finesse and agility across functions.
At a time when the kitchen is becoming smarter, sleeker, and sassier, Kaff’s move to install a COO with hands-on retail and ops firepower is no coincidence.
The appliances may be plug-and-play, but growing a legacy brand in a hyper-competitive market? That takes more than a timer and auto-clean tech.
AD Agencies
Amazon Ads launches AI tools to build and run campaigns in India
Two new agentic tools promise to slash the time and cost of building and running ad campaigns in India
MUMBAI Amazon Ads has thrown two agentic AI tools into the Indian market – Creative Agent and Ads Agent – and the pitch is blunt: do in hours what once took weeks, at no extra cost, and leave rivals eating algorithmic dust. The e-commerce giant is determined to democratise sophisticated advertising, handing small businesses the same firepower that until now only the biggest brands could afford.
Creative Agent, embedded within Amazon’s Creative Studio, works as a conversational AI creative partner. Click “chat” and it springs to life: researching products and audiences, brainstorming concepts, drafting multi-scene video scripts, generating images, animating scenes, laying in voiceovers and music, and spitting out finished display and video ads. The entire pipeline – from blank page to broadcast-ready creative – runs on Amazon’s own first-party signals, pulling from shopping behaviour, product-detail pages, brand stores and advertiser websites to ensure the final output resonates with real shoppers rather than just ticking creative boxes.
The tool supports multiple formats – Amazon DSP, Sponsored Display, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Brands Video and Streaming TV – and gives advertisers granular control at every stage, so they can edit everything from the overarching concept to the most minor scene detail without needing a designer or a brief. For a market stuffed with brands that have sharp products but thin creative budgets, that is a significant offer.
“AI is fundamentally changing what is possible in advertising. With Creative Agent and Ads Agent, we are giving every advertiser access to AI-powered intelligence and our insights be it a small business or an established brand. Our AI-powered tools help them create smarter, launch faster, and drive stronger business outcomes at every stage of the campaign lifecycle.” – Girish Prabhu, vice-president and head, Amazon Ads India.
The proof of concept is already in circulation. Frido, a growing Indian consumer brand, used early access to Creative Agent to run a Streaming TV campaign ahead of a sale event. Ganesh Sonawane, chief executive of Frido, is unequivocal: “Creative Agent removes that compromise entirely. We were able to launch our Streaming TV campaign for a sale event faster than ever – and the results were immediate.” The click-through rate for that campaign was 40 per cent higher than usual, Sonawane says, adding that the brand is now “testing more concepts, launching faster, and seeing stronger results, without increasing our creative spend.”
Running the numbers
The second tool, Ads Agent, tackles the unglamorous grind of campaign management. Currently live within Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) and heading to Amazon Ads Campaign Manager later this year, it automates the tasks that consume disproportionate hours: identifying audience segments, adjusting pacing across hundreds of simultaneous campaigns, and generating SQL queries for advanced analytics – all through plain-language conversation rather than lines of code.
Advertisers can upload a custom media plan and let Ads Agent construct a campaign structure and ad groups. The tool then reviews thousands of audience segments to surface the most relevant Amazon audiences and keywords, serves them up for human review, and applies approved choices at scale. For AMC users, it translates business questions into complex SQL queries in real time, collapsing what was once a specialist task into a conversational exchange.
Amazon frames both tools as part of a broader full-funnel advertising proposition that already spans Prime Video, Amazon MX Player and third-party publishers, with generative AI now stitched throughout the creative and campaign layer. The company claims that combining first-party shopping signals with agentic AI delivers “accuracy and depth that drives real business outcomes” – a claim Frido’s 40 per cent CTR uplift lends at least some early credibility to.
