Shakti Tokas joins IndusInd Bank as marketing avp 

GURGAON: Shakti Tokas has swapped pitches for payrolls. After a decade spent building other people’s brands from the agency side, Tokas has joined IndusInd Bank’s marketing communications team as avp, marketing, moving in-house for the first time and taking ownership of a brand from within.

The timing is pointed. Tokas arrives at a bank that is, by his own description, in the middle of rewriting its own story, a brief he has called terrifying in the best way.

The move caps a steady climb through India’s advertising ecosystem. Tokas most recently spent over two years as brand partner and digital head at Propagate India, part of Publicis Group, where he scaled the Gurgaon operations and drove digital transformation for clients including AO Smith, FedEx, Carlsberg, Dunkin, Greenpanel, Microtek, Relaxo and Harvest Gold. Before that came nearly five years at FoxyMoron, where he rose from senior account executive to associate director of client solutions and brand operations, and earlier stints at DDB Mudra Group and Addictive Media rounding out an apprenticeship that began, in his words, as a trainee who did not know what he did not know.

That climb was fast by any measure: senior leadership within eight years, a 30 under 30 recognition, and a seat at tables most people his age are still trying to get invited to. Tokas has also been building The Health Mill on the side, a premium organic lifestyle brand rooted in Indian wellness, describing it as the sharpest education in branding he could give himself.

He was quick to draw a line under the agency chapter without shutting the door on it. Not a goodbye to Propagate India, he said, just a new seat at the same industry.

Trends chased, meaning built, seats earned: Tokas has spent ten years arguing that brand work should be uncomfortable. Now he gets to prove it from the inside.