MAM
Navin Kansal joins Grey Digital as senior creative director
MUMBAI: Grey Digital has appointed Navin Kansal as senior creative director.
Prior to Grey, Kansal was with OgilvyOne for nine years. During his stint at OgilvyOne he worked on accounts in the digital space including brands such as Perfetti, Cadbury, Hutch (now Vodafone), The Economist, Tata Safari as well as Unilever brands like Lipton, Dove and Vaseline.
Kansal said, “This is the right time to begin a new innings. Grey Digital has an exciting portfolio of brands – the recent Volkswagen win being a case in point, and a talented team. I am looking forward to doing some good work here.”
Kansal comes with over 13 years of experience. His work has been recognised at Spikes Asia, Yahoo! Big Idea Chair, Abbys, Effies and AMEA.
Grey Digital VP South Asia Sudhir Nair says, “We are delighted to have Navin join our team and look forward to raising the bar in the digital space.”
Grey Digital is one of the leading digital agencies and is part of the global Grey Digital network. Its clients include Adobe, Infosys, Deutsche Bank and ITC amongst others.
MAM
Sameer Nair shares heartfelt note as he exits Applause Entertainment
After nine years building the streamer’s content engine, one of India’s best-known TV men is moving on
MUMBAI: Sameer Nair is out. The chief executive of Applause Entertainment, the content studio backed by Kumar Mangalam Birla’s media empire, has announced his departure after nearly nine years at the helm, closing the chapter on one of Indian entertainment’s more quietly consequential careers.
Nair, who built Applause from the ground up in its current avatar, oversaw a slate that spanned Indian originals and international adaptations, threading together a hub-and-spoke business model that partnered with streaming platforms, broadcasters and production houses alike. The results were uneven, as they always are in content, but the ambition was not.
In a post on LinkedIn, Nair was generous to his outgoing patron. He thanked Birla for being an “inspirational boss and a great patron of the arts,” and signed off with a cheerful “Au Revoir” and a promise to remain Applause’s biggest cheerleader. Whether that sentiment survives the next chapter remains to be seen.
No successor has been named. Applause Entertainment did not immediately comment.
Nair built the machine. Now someone else has to run it — and in a streaming market that is simultaneously consolidating and convulsing, that is no small ask.
