MAM
Mahendra Upadhyay is Mindshare’s Data & Technology head
MUMBAI: Mindshare has announced the appointment of Mahendra Upadhyay as Head of Data and Technology. His role has been effective from July 1, 2016.
In his new role, Mahendra will be responsible for data and technology duties within the Product team at Mindshare. While he will operate out of the Mumbai office, Mahendra will also regularly be involved with the Bangalore and Gurgaon office and will be reporting in to M A Parthasarathy (MAPS), Chief Product Officer, South Asia, Mindshare.
Mindshare South Asia chief product officer M A Parthasarathy commented on the appointment, “We are very pleased to have Mahendra on board. We have a clear agenda to create category and client solutions powered by data & technology. We recognize the need for very different skill sets to drive this. Mahendra has a proven aptitude to create clarity & drive innovation through data. He has delivered growth & business results across categories. We have full faith that his passion for data and technology will ensure that Mindshare continues to deliver revolutionary solutions that significantly impact business results.”
Commenting on his new role, Mahendra Upadhyay said, “I am both honored and excited to be a part of the Mindshare family. I strongly resonate with Mindshare’s values of speed, team work and provocation and am eagerly looking forward to work alongside a fabulous team and help redefine standards.”
AD Agencies
Fevicol releases its last ad campaign by the late Piyush Pandey
The adhesive brand’s last campaign by the late advertising legend Piyush Pandey turns an everyday Indian obsession into a quietly powerful metaphor
MUMBAI: Fevicol has never needed much of a plot. A sticky bond, a wry observation, a truth that every Indian instantly recognises — that has always been enough. “Kursi Pe Nazar,” the brand’s latest television commercial, is no different. And yet it carries a weight that no previous Fevicol film has had to bear: it is the last one its creator, the advertising legend Piyush Pandey, will ever make.
The film, released on Tuesday by Pidilite Industries, fixes its gaze on the kursi — the chair — and what it means in Indian life. Not just as a piece of furniture, but as a currency of ambition, a vessel of authority, and a source of quiet social drama that plays out in every home, office and institution across the country. Who sits in the chair, who waits for it, and who eyes it hungrily from across the room: the film transforms this sharply observed cultural truth into a narrative that is, in the best Fevicol tradition, funny, warm and instantly familiar.
The campaign was Pandey’s idea. He discussed it in detail with the team before his death, but did not live to see it shot. Prasoon Pandey, director at Corcoise Films who helmed the commercial, said the team needed five months to find its footing before they felt ready to shoot. “This was the toughest film ever for all of us,” he said. “It was Piyush’s idea, magical as always.”
The emotional weight of that responsibility was not lost on the team at Ogilvy India, which created the campaign. Kainaz Karmakar and Harshad Rajadhyaksha, group chief creative officers at Ogilvy India, described the process as “a pilgrimage of sorts, on the path that Piyush created not just for Ogilvy, but for our entire profession.”
Sudhanshu Vats, managing director of Pidilite Industries, said the film was rooted in a distinctly Indian insight. “The ‘kursi’ symbolises aspiration, transition, and ambition,” he said. “Piyush Pandey had an extraordinary ability to elevate such everyday observations into iconic storytelling for Fevicol. This film carries that legacy forward.”
That legacy is considerable. Over several decades, Pandey’s partnership with Fevicol produced some of the most beloved advertising in Indian history, building the brand into something rare: a household name that people actively enjoy watching sell to them.
“Kursi Pe Nazar” does not try to be a tribute. It simply tries to be a great Fevicol film. By most measures, it succeeds — which is, in the end, the most fitting send-off of all.
