MAM
RepIndia appoints Purnima Bali as creative director
New Delhi: RepIndia on Tuesday appointed Purnima Bali as creative director. She will be tasked with leading the creative endeavour at RepIndia, and further grow the creative business across Delhi, Bengaluru, and Mumbai.
Bali was previously working as the associate creative director at Interactive Avenues, Gurugram, where she headed the creative team and led the creative business for brands such as Honda Cars India, Hero Cycles, Havmor Icecreams, DishTV, and Oppo Mobiles.
On her new role, Bali said, “In a very short period, RepIndia has managed to make its presence felt in a space that has long been inundated with network agencies. Their body of work, prestigious clients, and their feet firmly on the ground are the attributes that have stood out in the awards circuit, and even amidst brands that are eagerly and earnestly looking for effective creative solutions where brand-agency camaraderie is the only way work gets done. I’m excited to be a part of team RepIndia and looking forward to breaking new creative barriers and creating new digital milestones.”
RepIndia founder Ayesha Chenoy said, “We have wanted to bring Purnima on board for years, her mad digital-first ideas and incredible drive are just what we wanted to add to RepIndia’s arsenal as we go on to have one of the best leadership teams across the country.”
MAM
‘You packed my parachute’: Avinash Kaul’s farewell salutes Network18’s unsung thousands
The outgoing chief’s LinkedIn post skips the boardroom tributes and goes straight to the security guards, drivers and office boys who kept the machine running
MUMBAI: Most farewell posts by senior media executives follow a familiar script: gratitude to leadership, a nod to the team, a hint of what lies ahead. Avinash Kaul’s is not that post.
Writing on LinkedIn on his last day at Network18 Media & Investments, where he spent nearly 12 years rising to chief executive, Kaul bypassed the boardroom entirely and directed his most heartfelt words at the people furthest from it: the security guard who greeted him before the building was fully awake, the fleet staff who drove him to airports at ungodly hours, the office assistants, the housekeeping teams, and the administrators who, as he put it, “held ten thousand invisible threads so the rest of us could look organised.”
“You packed my parachute,” he wrote. “Every day. Without fanfare, recognition, or ever asking for it.”
It was a striking note from a man who leaves behind a considerable operational record. Kaul joined Network18 managing three channels and exits with responsibility for 20, alongside a publishing business, a growing connected television footprint, and what he says is the highest revenue and highest channel share in the group’s history. He was quick to deflect the credit. “Not because of me. Because of 4,000 people who showed up, every day, in every department, across the country.”
To content teams across India, he issued a reminder that carries some weight given the pressures Indian news media currently faces. “Keep being custodians of trust for 700 million people. That is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.”
To colleagues in revenue and ratings who found him relentless and hard to satisfy, he was unapologetic but generous. “There was never a single moment of ill intent in my heart. Everything I pushed you towards came from one belief – that you were stronger than you knew, and I was not willing to let you settle for less than your real capability.” Those who believed him, he said, flew. Those who did not taught him to be a better communicator. He was grateful to both.
On what comes next, he offered a hint wrapped in metaphor. Something is being built, he said, prepared for “the way you pack a bag before a long climb. Not out of restlessness. Out of readiness.”
In a media landscape that rarely pauses to acknowledge the people who keep the lights on, it was, at the very least, a different kind of goodbye.
