Kanika Bains joins Publicis Groupe as VP and head of people and culture for MSL

GURUGRAM: Kanika Bains has a new address on her business card, and it comes with a plot twist. After building her name almost entirely in talent acquisition, Bains has joined Publicis Groupe as vice president and head, people and culture, for MSL, stepping into a role that pushes her well beyond hiring and into the broader, messier business of shaping culture. “After spending most of my career in talent and HR, I’m clearly not done figuring out people, culture and everything in between,” she said, announcing the move, before turning to greet her new team directly: “Hi MSL India, let’s do this.”

The move caps a career that has quietly tracked some of India’s most closely watched consumer and media businesses. Bains joins from Edelman, India, where she spent just over four years, from March 2022 to April 2026, as talent acquisition head. Based in Gurugram, she ran India hiring end to end, streamlined the talent acquisition strategy annually, and introduced practices aimed at sharpening employer branding, stakeholder relationships and hiring speed. Her remit stretched well beyond India too, with additional responsibility for priority hiring across Edelman’s Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong markets, and a seat on the firm’s core employer branding team.

Before Edelman, Bains spent a year as head of talent acquisition at Reliance Brands Limited, from February 2021 to February 2022, where she managed the centre of excellence for talent acquisition, led the corporate TA team and drove projects to digitise the hiring process, sharpen candidate experience and improve interviewer efficiency.

The bulk of her grounding, though, came at Paytm, where she spent over a decade, ten years and eight months to be precise, working her way up through four distinct roles. She began as manager, social media and talent acquisition for the product, business and growth functions from July 2010 to March 2016, before stepping up to senior manager in the same remit from April 2016 to March 2018. A promotion to assistant general manager, talent acquisition for senior product, business and growth functions followed from April 2018 to March 2019, before her final stint as deputy general manager, talent acquisition, from April 2019 to February 2021, leading leadership hiring across Paytm’s business, product and growth functions. Along the way she also wore the hats of HR business partner, hiring manager and social media head at the company.

Her HR journey began even earlier, with a stint as senior executive, corporate HR, at 94.3 MY FM, part of Synergy Media Entertainment and the Dainik Bhaskar Group, from September 2008 to July 2010. Before that, she cut her teeth with two shorter HR executive stints, at TIMES OOH from February to July 2008, and at Bennett Coleman and Co. Ltd, the Times Group, from December 2006 to January 2008.

It is a career arc that reads like a masterclass in talent acquisition, and now Bains is being handed the culture mandate at MSL India to match it. For an industry that talks endlessly about employer branding and candidate experience, putting someone who has actually built those systems from the ground up in charge of culture looks less like a gamble and more like a well earned promotion.