MAM
Nishith Desai Associates adds two heavyweights to global strategy roster
MUMBAI: When a law firm starts playing in the big league of global strategy, you know it’s thinking far beyond dusty courtrooms. Nishith Desai Associates (NDA) has just brought in two star players Chintan Vaishnav in Boston and Ritika Patni in New York to sharpen its edge in techno-policy, cross-border strategy, and boardroom advisory.
Dr Vaishnav, a futurist and techno-policy strategist, is best known for steering the Atal Innovation Mission at NITI Aayog and chairing the Startup20 Engagement Group during India’s G20 Presidency in 2023. With a Ph.D. in Engineering Systems and an M.S. in Technology and Policy from MIT, plus a B.A. in Indian Classical Music for good measure, he’s part scientist, part strategist, part storyteller. At NDA, he will spearhead work in AI governance, innovation policy, and public-private collaboration essentially, the legal brains trust for an increasingly tech-led world.
On the other coast, Ritika Patni takes charge as leader of NDA’s Global Legal Strategy Consulting Practice. A gold medallist from NUJS Kolkata and MBA alumna from Columbia Business School, she’s worn many hats corporate lawyer at Linklaters London, founder of wellness startup Arth, and consultant to Fortune 500s at Alvarez & Marsal. Her new brief at NDA: guiding cross-border strategy for technology, healthcare, and professional services clients.
The hires reinforce NDA’s unique “4D” model Practice, Industry, Leadership, Skillset which has long drawn in experts from outside the conventional legal track. It’s the same formula that brought in an engineer-turned-lawyer (Vaibhav Parikh), a surgeon-turned-lawyer (Milind Antani), a CA-MBA-turned-lawyer (Nishchal Joshipura), and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence (Mihir Parikh).
Founder Nishith Desai calls the appointments “a commitment to embracing change and challenging conventional thinking” as NDA evolves into a strategic legal consulting powerhouse. With Vaishnav’s policy chops and Patni’s cross-border acumen, the firm looks set to blend law, leadership, and lateral thinking in a way few others can match.
MAM
ASCI study uncovers how Gen Alpha navigates ads in endless digital feeds
‘What the Sigma?’ ethnographic report maps blurred boundaries between content and commerce for 7–15-year-olds.
MUMBAI: Gen Alpha isn’t scrolling through the internet, they’re living rent-free inside its never-ending dopamine drip, and the ads have already moved in next door. The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) Academy, partnering with Futurebrands Consulting, has published ‘What the Sigma?’, an immersive ethnographic study that maps how Indian children aged 7–15 (Generation Alpha) consume, interpret and live alongside media and commercial messaging in a hyper-digital environment.
The research draws on in-home interviews, sibling and peer conversations, and discussions with parents, teachers, counsellors, psychologists, marketers and kidfluencers across six cities. It examines not only what children watch but how algorithms, content creators, peers and parents shape their relationship with the constant stream of shorts, vlogs, gameplay, memes, sponsored posts and ‘kid-ified’ adult material.
Five core themes emerged:
- Discontinuous Generation, Gen Alpha is not growing up alongside the internet, they are growing up inside it. Cultural references, humour, aesthetics and language sync globally in real time, often leaving adults functionally illiterate in their children’s world. A reference that lands instantly for a 10-year-old in Mumbai or Visakhapatnam feels opaque or disjointed to most parents.
- Authority Vacuum, Parents and teachers frequently lose cultural fluency in digital spaces. The algorithm responsive, inexhaustible and perfectly attuned to preferences becomes the most attentive presence in many children’s daily lives. Rules around screen time feel increasingly difficult to enforce when adults cannot fully see or understand the content landscape.
- Digital as Society, Online and offline no longer exist as separate realms, they form one continuous reality. The phone is not a tool children pick up; it is the primary social environment they inhabit.
- Great Media Mukbang, Content flows as an ambient, boundary-less, multi-sensorial stream. Entertainment, advertising, commerce, gameplay, memes and vlogs merge into one undifferentiated feed. The line between active choice and passive absorption has largely collapsed.
- Blurred Ad Recognition, Children aged 7–12 typically recognise only the most overt advertising formats. Influencer promotions, gaming integrations and vlog sponsorships often register as organic entertainment. Children aged 13–15 show greater ad literacy but remain highly susceptible to narrative-integrated, passion-driven and emotionally resonant brand messaging. Discernment remains low across the board in a non-stop stream.
ASCI CEO and secretary general Manisha Kapoor said, “ASCI Academy’s study is an investigation into the content life of Generation Alpha not to judge them but to understand them. Their cultural reference points seem disjointed from those of earlier generations. Insights on how they perceive advertising is the first step towards building more responsible engagement frameworks, given that they are the youngest media consumers in our country right now.”
Futurebrands Consulting founder and director Santosh Desai added, “While earlier generations have been exposed to digital media, for this generation it is the world they inhabit. This report explores not only what they watch but how they are being shaped by algorithms, content and advertising.”
The study proposes four adaptive, principles-led pathways:
- Universal signposting of commercial intent using design principles that make advertising recognisable even to young audiences.
- Ecosystem-wide responsibility shared among advertisers, platforms, creators, schools and parents.
- Future-ready safeguards built directly into children’s content experiences rather than as optional background settings.
- Formal media and advertising literacy embedded in school curricula to teach age-appropriate understanding of persuasion and commercial intent.
In a feed that never pauses, Gen Alpha isn’t merely watching content, they’re swimming in an ocean where entertainment, commerce and identity swirl together. The real question isn’t whether they can spot an ad; it’s whether the adults building the ocean can agree on where the lifeguards should stand.
