MAM
Ogilvy India makes key top-level appointments
MUMBAI: Advertising agency Ogilvy India has announced the appointment of Prem Narayan as its new chief strategy officer and Balagopalan Ganapathy as the new head of planning, Ogilvy Mumbai. Narayan and Ganapathy have started in their respective roles with immediate effect.
In his capacity as chief strategy officer, Narayan will lead the planning team to drive the national agenda. He will also continue to partner the CCOs and business heads to deliver creative solutions to clients nationally. Narayan will report directly to Kunal Jeswani.
Narayan has been with Ogilvy since 2004. He has been part of the team that pioneered the planning function in the agency. He has worked on many clients during this journey – Asian Paints, Bajaj, Blue Star, Castrol, Ceat, GreenPly, ICICI Bank, MP Birla Group, Tata Motors, Tata Sky, Unilever, Zandu to name a few. He has partnered creative agencies to generate outstanding work with brands like Asian Paints, Tata Safari, Bru, Hamam and Red Label. He has won the respect and love of all clients, creative and client servicing partners he has worked with. He has won many Effies on his brands (including last year’s AME agency of year).
Ogilvy India vice chairman and director of client relation Madhukar Sabnavis says, “Prem and Ganapathy are two accomplished planners of Ogilvy who have contributed to function in the last decade; their promotion is a recognition of this. They are the ideal next generation planners to take Ogilvy Planning in India to the next level.”
Ganapathy, aka Guns, will report to Narayan and work with the city business heads and CCOs to drive the planning agenda for Mumbai office. Guns has been part of the planning team since 2005. He has built strong relationships and been part of the team that has done stellar work on brands such as Asian Paints, Bajaj, Cadbury, Home Center, JSW, ITC and Pidilite to name a few. He has been the agency’s Effectiveness Champion for years- and the first and only IPA winner for Cadbury Dairy Milk in 2013. Guns is a much admired planning leader who has won the love and respect of every client he has worked with.
Ogilvy India CEO Kunal Jeswani adds, “Ogilvy is, and has always been, a place full of opportunity and growth for talent that shines. Prem and Guns represent the best of Ogilvy, not just as planners but as Ogilvy Ambassadors. I am excited to see them lead change in our industry and our company, driving integrated strategy and planning across our brands and disciplines.”
Both of them a part of the training faculty at Ogilvy and have conducted several training programs for the young talent in Ogilvy.
Brands
Google completes $32 billion Wiz deal to boost AI and cloud security
Wiz joins Google Cloud but keeps multi-cloud support across rival platforms
NEW YORK: Google has completed its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security company Wiz, marking the biggest deal in the tech giant’s history and signalling a major push to strengthen security in the era of artificial intelligence and multi-cloud computing.
The New York-headquartered cybersecurity firm will join Google Cloud while continuing to operate under the Wiz brand. Crucially, the company will maintain support for multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, reflecting the reality that most large organisations run their systems across several cloud providers.
Google said the acquisition is designed to help organisations build and scale applications more securely as businesses and governments increasingly move critical systems and data to the cloud. At the same time, the rapid adoption of generative AI has introduced new cybersecurity risks, with attackers also using AI to launch faster and more sophisticated attacks.
Wiz has built a reputation for simplifying cloud security. Its platform maps entire cloud environments, identifying vulnerabilities, potential attack paths and misconfigurations before they can be exploited. By connecting insights from code, cloud infrastructure and runtime environments, it allows security and engineering teams to detect and fix risks early in the development cycle.
Bringing Wiz into Google Cloud will create what the company describes as a unified security platform capable of detecting, preventing and responding to threats across cloud and AI environments. The combined offering will also integrate Google’s own security capabilities, including threat intelligence tools, security operations platforms and the cybersecurity expertise of Mandiant.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the move reflects the growing importance of security as more organisations rely on AI and cloud technologies. “Keeping people safe online has always been part of Google’s mission,” he said, adding that the partnership will help organisations innovate with greater confidence.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, said the goal is to make security an enabler rather than a roadblock for businesses building modern applications. He noted that the combined technologies will simplify the complex task of protecting hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
For Wiz, the acquisition opens the door to global scale while keeping its core philosophy intact. Co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport said the company remains committed to an open, multi-cloud approach and will continue supporting customers regardless of where their workloads run.
Over the past year, Wiz has expanded its platform to address emerging risks tied to AI applications, including tools that help organisations monitor AI usage, detect AI-specific vulnerabilities and secure AI workloads during runtime.
With Google’s infrastructure, artificial intelligence capabilities and security ecosystem now behind it, Wiz plans to accelerate development of its platform while continuing to serve enterprises, governments and start-ups operating across different cloud environments.
For Google Cloud, the acquisition adds a powerful piece to its security puzzle as competition intensifies among global cloud providers. For customers, it promises a future where building fast in the cloud does not have to come at the expense of staying secure.
