AD Agencies
Rahul Thappa takes over as dentsu Media managing director Singapore
MUMBAI: He’s shuffled between jobs in the south east Asian region and in India. Between being on the media side and on the broadcast side.
Rahul Thappa, however, is now on the media side as he has taken over as managing director of dentsu Media based in Singapore from 1 January 2025.
His remit: looking after investment and management for dentsu’s regional and global accounts out of Singapore and growing the agency’s customer experience capabilities (CX) with Merkle.”
Merkle is dentsu’s technology-enabled, data-driven CX management company.
Thapa was last the managing director of Vista Equity Partners-backed global centre of excellence Naviga for the past three and a half years based in Gurugram. He took a shot at self-employment by setting up a consulting firm VDO Focus Consulting for a year and half advising start ups to manage their digital campaigns and strategy between January 2020 and July 2021.
Between July 2013 and September 2019, he made south east Asia his home base – first in Astro in Malaysia as VP data analytics, trading & sales enablement and then at Fox network group in Singapore as SVP ad sale strategy, sales operations.
A short stab at entrepreneurship preceded that which ended in in six months. As did his assignment with Mindshare in Gurgaon in the leadership team where he stayed for around a year. He hopped on to Mail Today as COO, but could continue there for only nine months between April 2011 and December 2011.
A mathematics graduate and post graduate diploma holder in marketing communication from Mica and PGPX in general management from IIM-A., Rahul sent six years and six months at Mindshare Malaysia rising to become managing partner.
AD Agencies
Fevicol releases its last ad campaign by the late Piyush Pandey
The adhesive brand’s last campaign by the late advertising legend Piyush Pandey turns an everyday Indian obsession into a quietly powerful metaphor
MUMBAI: Fevicol has never needed much of a plot. A sticky bond, a wry observation, a truth that every Indian instantly recognises — that has always been enough. “Kursi Pe Nazar,” the brand’s latest television commercial, is no different. And yet it carries a weight that no previous Fevicol film has had to bear: it is the last one its creator, the advertising legend Piyush Pandey, will ever make.
The film, released on Tuesday by Pidilite Industries, fixes its gaze on the kursi — the chair — and what it means in Indian life. Not just as a piece of furniture, but as a currency of ambition, a vessel of authority, and a source of quiet social drama that plays out in every home, office and institution across the country. Who sits in the chair, who waits for it, and who eyes it hungrily from across the room: the film transforms this sharply observed cultural truth into a narrative that is, in the best Fevicol tradition, funny, warm and instantly familiar.
The campaign was Pandey’s idea. He discussed it in detail with the team before his death, but did not live to see it shot. Prasoon Pandey, director at Corcoise Films who helmed the commercial, said the team needed five months to find its footing before they felt ready to shoot. “This was the toughest film ever for all of us,” he said. “It was Piyush’s idea, magical as always.”
The emotional weight of that responsibility was not lost on the team at Ogilvy India, which created the campaign. Kainaz Karmakar and Harshad Rajadhyaksha, group chief creative officers at Ogilvy India, described the process as “a pilgrimage of sorts, on the path that Piyush created not just for Ogilvy, but for our entire profession.”
Sudhanshu Vats, managing director of Pidilite Industries, said the film was rooted in a distinctly Indian insight. “The ‘kursi’ symbolises aspiration, transition, and ambition,” he said. “Piyush Pandey had an extraordinary ability to elevate such everyday observations into iconic storytelling for Fevicol. This film carries that legacy forward.”
That legacy is considerable. Over several decades, Pandey’s partnership with Fevicol produced some of the most beloved advertising in Indian history, building the brand into something rare: a household name that people actively enjoy watching sell to them.
“Kursi Pe Nazar” does not try to be a tribute. It simply tries to be a great Fevicol film. By most measures, it succeeds — which is, in the end, the most fitting send-off of all.
