MAM
Percept restructures; gets Shiv Sethuraman as CEO
MUMBAI: Percept has gone ahead to consolidate its diverse strategic business units to a single holistic entity called Percept One. The agency currently stands at having revenues of worth Rs 1,250 million. Along with this the agency has also appointed Shiv Sethuraman as CEO of Percept One, with effect from 14 July, 2014.
He will be responsible for leading business development and integration of all marketing communication (marcom) services, creating opportunities for synergy within and across the marcom businesses of the Percept group, attaining profitability and revenue growth organically and inorganically, as also paving the roadmap for the overall marcom business of the Percept group. Sethuraman has a challenging mandate of driving a 30 per cent year-on-year growth with a target of achieving revenues worth Rs 2,750 million by 2017.
Previously, the marketing communications services business of Percept spanned three separate verticals, namely creative services, media services and other marcom services. The creative services vertical encompassed advertising, brand marketing consultancy and communications, corporate identity, strategy, creative, design and packaging and integrated marketing communication consultancy services.
The media services vertical spanned media planning and buying, out-of-home media, retail media, rural media and digital media. The third vertical included a host of services including experiential marketing, sports management and marketing, incentives, conferences and exhibitions management, event management and marketing, celebrity endorsements and talent management, entertainment branding and marketing, branded entertainment, brand activations and promotions, public and media relations and social media marketing.
Sethuraman has had a remarkable two decade long career in the media and communications domain. He has handled dynamic portfolios spanning global brand development and business acquisition and served as country head in Europe and also in India.
Prior to joining Percept, Sethuraman was associated with TBWA, India in the role of CEO and personally led the Nissan, Adidas and infrastructure/realty cluster within the agency. He kick-started his advertising career with Ogilvy where he cut his teeth on many of the key clients of the agency such as Cadbury, Castrol, Unilever and Shell amongst others. He moved to Ogilvy, Paris in 2001 as global business director and was later elevated to the position of MD, Ogilvy & Mather, Paris where he acquired large global and regional accounts such as Louis Vuitton, Coca Cola – Europe and Europcar and also managed several businesses including IBM, Unilever and Nestle.
Sethuraman said, “Percept has been a pioneer in the entertainment, media and communications space and has set many benchmarks over the decades. With the creation of Percept One we are now bringing together the very successful individual businesses to create an integrated entity. This entity is already 700 people strong and has over Rs 1250 million in revenue, making it one of the leading companies in its space. The mandate and the challenge is to use this size and scale to propel us to a faster growth trajectory. I look forward to working closely with the team at Percept to ensure that Percept One reaches its goals.”
“We strongly believe that Shiv will be able to provide the leadership that Percept One needs to become a strong unified marcom service. His global leadership experience and brand experience will help us achieve the scale and growth targets we have set for ourselves,” added Percept director Ajay Upadhyay.
Digital
Eight-year-old coder steals the show at India AI Impact Summit 2026
Ranvir Sachdeva meets Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman, links ancient philosophy to modern AI
DELHI: Amid a sea of global tech chiefs and policy heavyweights, the loudest buzz at Bharat Mandapam this week came from a boy barely tall enough to see over the lectern.
Ranvir Sachdeva, eight, became the youngest keynote speaker at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, elbowing his way into a line-up dominated by chief executives, founders and ministers. Calm, bespectacled and fiercely articulate, he declared himself a technologist — and spoke like one.
“I’m here as the youngest keynote speaker at the India AI Impact Summit. I’m talking about how I’m linking ancient Indian philosophies to modern-day technologies. I’m also covering the different approaches which the rest of the nations are building AI,” he told news agency ANI.
He added: “I’m talking about how India is building AI with. I’m sharing my own use case of an Indian AI model just released and how I’m contributing to India’s GDP and driving AI literacy with it.”
The summit, held from February 16 to 21 in New Delhi, has drawn global names. Ranvir met Google chief executive Sundar Pichai and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman on the sidelines, sharing photographs of the encounters. He has previously met Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff and Doreen Bogdan-Martin, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, at the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva.
In 2024, he met António Guterres, United Nations secretary-general.
His most high-profile brush with corporate royalty came earlier. In 2023, during the opening of Apple’s Delhi store, Ranvir demonstrated his Swift coding skills to Apple chief executive Tim Cook in a one-on-one session. Cook later posted: “What an incredible reception, Delhi, thank you! We’re delighted to welcome our customers to our newest store—Apple Saket!”
What an incredible reception, Delhi, thank you! We’re delighted to welcome our customers to our newest store—Apple Saket! pic.twitter.com/5Jmi79ixzl— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) April 20, 2023
Ranvir replied publicly: “Thank you so much, @tim_cook! It was great meeting you today and showcasing my Apple Swift coding skills! You are an inspiration and I so want to meet you at #WWDC2023!”
Thank you so much, Tim! You are an inspiration and I so want to meet you at #WWDC2023 ! 🙂 https://t.co/BVthznLjD8— Ranvir Singh Sachdeva (@ranvirsachdeva) April 20, 2023
The invitation followed. Cook extended a personal call for Ranvir to attend the Worldwide Developers Conference 2023 at Apple Park in Cupertino.
This is not Ranvir’s first turn on the global stage. In 2025, aged seven, he addressed the United Nations’ AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva as its youngest keynote speaker. He spoke for 20 minutes on “Agents of Change: A 7-Year-Old’s Lens on Generation AI for Good”, in front of more than 10,000 attendees from over 180 countries and 53 UN partner organisations.
He shared the broader stage with Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel laureate and Turing Award winner, alongside senior figures from Amazon, Meta and Salesforce. According to a LinkedIn post by the Ardee School, Ranvir argued that “Generation AI are the true changemakers”, highlighting healthcare breakthroughs from bionic solutions and exoskeletons to assistive devices for ALS patients. He called for the democratisation of such tools to bridge the digital divide.
The precocity runs deep. At six, he became the world’s youngest TEDx speaker, speaking on technology and innovation. At five, he won a gold medal as a “Super Presenter” in the 2022 Global Reading Challenge. Media reports say that in 2021 he built a prototype rocket aimed at supporting NASA’s Mars exploration, earning recognition from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
In 2023, he became the youngest recipient of a robotics and AI certification from IIT Delhi after a summer workshop at the I-HUB Foundation for Robotics.
He began coding at three.
At an event otherwise obsessed with trillion-dollar valuations, sovereign AI stacks and regulatory guardrails, it was a small voice that cut through. Linking Sanskrit thought to silicon chips, GDP to generative models, Ranvir Sachdeva did more than make history. He made the grown-ups listen.
#WATCH | Delhi: At #IndiaAIImpactSummit2026, Ranvir Sachdeva, Child Prodigy, Technologist, Global Author says, "I'm here as the youngest keynote speaker at the India AI Impact Summit. I'm talking about how I'm linking ancient Indian philosophies to modern-day technologies. I'm… pic.twitter.com/e3OGgtxyDK— ANI (@ANI) February 19, 2026
