Zoo Media elevates The Starter Labs founders Kartik Khanna and Rehan Dadachanji to partners

MUMBAI: In a move designed to bring its agencies closer and its ambitions into sharper focus, Zoo Media has elevated The Starter Labs founders Kartik Khanna and Rehan Dadachanji to partners and co-founders, strengthening the leadership bench of India’s independent agency network.

The elevation marks a new chapter for the duo, who built The Starter Labs into a 100-strong team serving clients across industries and markets. Zoo Media partially acquired the agency in 2022, after which Khanna and Dadachanji continued to expand the business while contributing their expertise across the wider network.

The promotion also signals a broader shift in how Zoo Media wants to operate: less as a collection of individual agencies and more as an integrated operation capable of bringing specialist skills together to deliver measurable business results.

The founders of FoxyMoron and Zoo Media, Suveer Bajaj and Pratik Gupta, said the duo had played an important role in expanding The Starter Labs and contributing entrepreneurial drive, operational expertise and client understanding across the network.

“Their elevation to Partners reflects the trust they have earned and the leadership role they will play as Zoo Media continues to evolve,” said FoxyMoron and Zoo Media co-founder Suveer Bajaj. He added that their combined experience would help the network develop more connected, responsive and future-ready solutions.

For Zoo Media, the ambition extends beyond an expanded leadership team. The network is looking to deepen collaboration between its agencies, strengthen specialist capabilities and build a more agile, results-focused model for clients.

“We want to make Zoo Media the country’s most sought after network for Indian and global brands,” said Rehan Dadachanji. He said the network had an opportunity to build an Indian independent agency group capable of competing internationally at scale without losing its entrepreneurial spirit or specialist expertise.

Dadachanji added that the duo’s focus over the past decade had remained consistent: delivering business outcomes for the brands they serve.

Their new responsibilities will span the adoption of artificial intelligence across workflows and creative disciplines, stronger research capabilities, advances in performance marketing and creative excellence, and pricing models more closely tied to outcomes.

Khanna will bring a customer-first approach, with a focus on direct-to-consumer brands, performance marketing and full-funnel campaigns that connect consumer discovery with conversion. Dadachanji, meanwhile, will work on strengthening Zoo Media’s integrated proposition, connecting specialist teams across the network and matching their expertise to individual client needs.

“The idea is to go beyond individual agencies and build a truly connected network, while staying more integrated, more effective and more relevant to how businesses are evolving,” said Kartik Khanna.

The move comes as marketing agencies face mounting pressure to demonstrate the commercial value of their work, rather than simply count impressions, campaigns or creative output. AI is accelerating that shift, raising expectations around speed, efficiency and personalisation while making differentiation harder to sustain.

Zoo Media’s next test will be to turn its expanded leadership and connected capabilities into an advantage clients can see on their balance sheets. The message is clear: the network wants to make collaboration its operating model and business outcomes its calling card.