MAM
Mercedes-Benz’s Ira Pradhan joins Freshworks as communications lead
NEW DELHI: Days after stepping down as corporate communications lead at Mercedes-Benz R&D India, Ira Pradhan has joined Freshworks as leader of internal communications, diversity & inclusion, and CSR.
Freshworks provides SaaS customer engagement solutions through a suite of products for organisations of all sizes.
Pradhan made the announcement in a post on professional networking platform LinkedIn.
“Often described as a rocketship by most who work here, Freshworks has inspired many, including me, by being a global product company from India, a home-bred SaaS unicorn with one of the most talked about people culture. I am excited to begin this next step in my career and thrilled to work with some of the most talented group of individuals across the globe,” she wrote.
Pradhan was with Mercedes-Benz India for a little over six years, from September 2014 to November 2020. She has over 15 years of experience in communications and has worked with brands like Philips, Wipro and Tesco in the past.
She was recently named among the 20 Rising Stars of 2020 by PRovoke Media in its annual Influence 100 report. She also mentors young women professionals through the Shenomics program: Lead Like a Girl.
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.
