Parag Murudkar named head of marketing at Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC

MUMBAI: Corporate musical chairs rarely make for interesting reading, except when the move says something about strategy rather than reshuffling for its own sake. Parag Murudkar’s shift from Aditya Birla Capital’s non-banking finance business to head of marketing at Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund is exactly that sort of move. Same conglomerate, different business, and a mandate that now spans marketing, brand and public relations for one of India’s largest asset managers.

Murudkar is no stranger to building things from nothing. Over more than fifteen years in marketing and advertising, a decade of it squarely in digital, he has repeatedly been the person brought in to set up teams from scratch and turn them into revenue-generating engines rather than cost centres. That pattern holds right through his career, from a business director role at MEC Interaction handling paid, owned and earned media strategy for major clients, to senior digital marketing roles at ICICI Bank and Axis Bank, where he built out NRI-focused digital platforms and social media operations respectively.

The YES Bank years arguably shaped him most as a leader of scale. Over five and a half years there, Murudkar rose from head of digital marketing to group executive vice president and eventually head of digital alliances and acquisition, running brand engagement, online reputation management, and fintech partnerships for digital banking at a bank that was, for a period, among India’s most aggressive digital innovators. From there he moved to Viacom18, helping shape the go-to-market strategy for VOOT during its launch, before switching tack entirely into fintech at Refyne India, where his GTM strategies delivered a threefold jump in transactions and doubled sign-ups quarter on quarter, a number that would catch any hiring committee’s eye.

His most recent stop, heading digital and emerging technologies for Fulcrum at Mindshare India, gave him a media-agency vantage point on where marketing technology is headed, before he joined Aditya Birla Capital’s NBFC business as marketing head in April 2025. That stint lasted just under a year and a half before this latest move.

What makes the shift notable is the sector jump within a single group. NBFC marketing and asset management marketing are different beasts entirely, one selling loans and credit products, the other selling trust, performance and long-term financial planning to a base that includes both sophisticated investors and first-time mutual fund buyers. Murudkar himself framed it as bringing NBFC learnings into asset management, a new set of opportunities and things to build within the same Aditya Birla Capital family. For a conglomerate increasingly competing for share of wallet across lending, insurance and investment products, moving proven operators across business lines rather than hiring externally suggests a deliberate strategy of cross-pollinating marketing talent to keep brand building consistent across its financial services stable.