MAM
Manish Bhatnagar joins BEI Confluence as director-digital services
Mumbai: BEI Confluence, an independent advertising agency in India, has announced a strategic addition to its leadership team with the appointment of Manish Bhatnagar, a senior digital marketing professional as director of digital services from 5 August 2024. Manish is a seasoned strategic digital marketing professional with 19 years of experience driving digital marketing & transformation, programmatic marketing, influencer marketing, digital media planning & buying for objective-oriented return on investment (ROI) based marketing plans.
Manish joins BEI Confluence after a five-year stint as head-digital marketing at Digitalthinkhub, a digital-first agency in Gurugram where he excelled in creating client-centered, successful digital marketing campaigns that resulted in providing the client the desired return on investment (ROI) objectives.
Manish joined BEI Confluence with stints in digital marketing agencies and media houses including Digital Thinkhub, Percept Ltd, Times Group, Hindustan Times (HT) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). Throughout his career he has excelled in developing client-centric digital marketing campaigns & strategies that consistently achieve and exceed desired Return on Investment (ROI) objectives.
At BEI Confluence he joins in a leadership position heading the Digital Team and from the agency’s side will lead the Digital initiatives on Digital First brands like Biryani by Kilo, Kajaria Kerovit, Insecticides (India) Ltd, JK Group, Modi Group’s flagship brands and many more.
On his appointment, BEI Confluence CMD Tapas Gupta commented, “As the world of advertising in India is rapidly moving towards a Digital-First approach, investing in bright & seasoned digital resources and digital technology have been our key priorities in the last few years. Manish’s appointment is in line with our vision of rapidly transforming BEI Confluence into one of India’s foremost talent & technology-based 360, fully Indian and independent Marketing Communications agencies in the next two years.”
BEI Confluence joint MD Abhishek Gupta stated, “We are delighted to have Manish head our Digital initiatives and lead a large team of digital professionals to provide our clients with Digital-First solutions that will help our brands acquire greater salience, achieve Return on Investment (ROI) driven results and build a robust future for these brands. I strongly believe Manish with his impressive credentials and rich experience in building brands digitally will be able to take BEI Confluence’s Digital initiatives to its next level. We wish him the very best.”
Manish Bhatnagar added, “I am thrilled to join BEI Confluence and contribute to its dynamic team. The opportunity to work for such a forward-thinking organisation aligns perfectly with my passion for creating impactful digital marketing strategies. I am eager to leverage my experience to drive innovative campaigns and achieve outstanding results for our clients.”
MAM
Kiran Mani quits JioStar to lead OpenAI’s Asia Pacific push
The American AI giant poaches one of India’s most seasoned technology executives to drive its ambitions in the region, as India cements its place as a critical growth market
MUMBAI: Kiran Mani, the founding chief executive of JioHotstar and one of India’s most seasoned technology executives, has quit JioStar to become OpenAI’s managing director for Asia Pacific, a newly created role that signals how seriously the San Francisco-based AI company is betting on the region.
Mani, who stepped down as chief executive, digital at JioStar, will take up the position in June, relocating from Mumbai to Singapore. He will report directly to Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer, sources privy to the development told ET.
The appointment is a coup for OpenAI. Mani spent more than 13 years at Google, where he ran the Android and Google Play business across Asia Pacific and Japan, and before that oversaw more than $5bn in advertising revenue as managing director of US retail, a role that also made him head of Google’s global retail practice. Earlier stints at Microsoft, IBM and Ogilvy & Mather round out a career that spans brand-building, P&L management and digital transformation across three continents.
At JioStar, he architected the merger of Viacom18 with Star India to create India’s largest media and entertainment platform, no small feat in a market notorious for its complexity.
The hire underscores a simple commercial reality: India is OpenAI’s second-largest global user base, and the broader Asia Pacific region is growing faster than almost anywhere else. Mani will lead regional strategy and operations from Singapore, inheriting a market that has become, as one source put it, a key growth engine for the company.
For OpenAI, the race to dominate Asian AI adoption is on. With Mani in the chair, it has found someone who knows exactly how to run hard.
