MAM
Social Panga paints bold future with Soumabha Nandi as creative strategy EVP
MUMBAI: Social Panga has added a fresh stroke of creativity to its canvas with the appointment of Soumabha Nandi as executive vice president for creative strategy & growth. This strategic move is set to elevate the agency’s storytelling game, blending innovation with business impact as it continues its expansion spree.
Som shared, “Social Panga’s people-first approach and hunger for the new really resonated with me. With evolving markets and breakthrough technologies, this is exactly the kind of creative playground that fuels me. I look forward to pushing boundaries and making an impact.”
Social Panga co-founder Himanshu Arora said, “His expertise in creative strategy and business impact aligns perfectly with our vision. As we continue pushing creative boundaries, Som’s leadership will be instrumental in our next growth phase.”
Social Panga co-founder Gaurav Arora added, “At Social Panga, creativity and strategy go hand in hand. Som’s ability to fuse big ideas with data-driven insights will elevate our client relationships and inspire our team to deliver exceptional work.”
Bringing over 13 years of brand transformation expertise, Som (as he is popularly known) has crafted narratives for industry giants like Flipkart, Disney plus Hotstar, Max Fashion, Phonepe, Mcdonald’s, Domino’s, and more. At Social Panga, he will steer the creative vision, drive new business, and foster a culture where bold ideas turn into tangible results.
MAM
Smytten appoints Shishir Varma as CEO of Pulseai Research
Rebranded AI platform scales with 150 plus clients and 30 million users.
MUMBAI: In a world obsessed with what consumers say, Smytten is betting on what they actually do. The company has appointed Shishir Varma as chief executive officer of Pulseai Research, signalling a sharper push into AI-led, behaviour-driven consumer insights. The move comes as Smytten rebrands its insights vertical from Smytten PulseAI to Pulseai Research, marking a shift away from traditional, project-based research towards a more continuous, intelligence-led model.
Varma brings over 30 years of global experience across APAC markets, including India, China and Japan. Most recently managing director, Insights at Kantar Japan, he has built and scaled consumer insight businesses across geographies, including playing a key role in establishing Millward Brown in India. His mandate now: turn Pulseai into a category-defining platform in a space still dominated by surveys and static reports.
The pitch is straightforward but ambitious. Instead of relying on claimed responses, Pulseai Research taps into observed behaviour leveraging Smytten’s ecosystem of 30 million users built over a decade of product discovery, trials and purchases. The idea is to close the long-standing gap between what consumers claim and how they actually behave.
The numbers suggest early traction. In under 18 months, the platform has onboarded over 150 enterprise clients across sectors, pointing to growing demand for faster, more reliable alternatives to legacy research models.
Under the hood, the platform blends behavioural data with AI and large language model-led analysis to deliver real-time sentiment tracking, scalable qualitative insights, faster quantitative studies and always-on brand intelligence. In practical terms, that means compressing research timelines from weeks to days without sacrificing depth.
The ambition extends beyond FMCG. Pulseai Research is positioning itself as a cross-category intelligence layer, spanning auto, education, gadgets and emerging consumer segments anywhere behaviour-rich data can sharpen decision-making.
For Smytten, the leadership hire is less about optics and more about direction. With Varma at the helm, the company is leaning into a simple but powerful premise: in the age of AI, insight isn’t just about asking better questions, it’s about watching more closely.
