BestMediaInfo unveils jury line-up for Rising Star Awards 2022

India’s top marketing minds including CMOs, media strategy heads and other professionals helming top roles at brands have come together to judge the entries for BestMediaInfo’s Rising Star Awards 2022. 

The awards will take place in Gurugram in September 2022. The last date to enter the awards is August 12, 2022. To get an early bird discount of 20%, one may enter before July 31, 2022. 

The awards will honour young achievers in media strategy across brands and agencies. Awards would be given across 12 business and eight special categories.

Aligned with the awards proposition, Manorama Online has come on board as Rising Star Awards Associate Sponsor.

Click here for the detailed judging process and judging criteria.

The jury line-up (in alphabetical order) for the Rising Star Awards comprises:

Abhishek Shahabadi

Abhishek Shahabadi, Vice-President - Marketing Services & Productivity, Diageo India

Shahabadi was recently promoted to the role of Vice-President - Marketing Services & Productivity at Diageo India. Prior to this role, he used to lead marketing for the Luxury and Premium Core Portfolio of Diageo India. He has been with Diageo since 2006, when he began handling the Media investments driving efficiency and effectiveness of marketing spends. 

Shahabadi switched over to marketing in 2007 as Marketing Manager for the mainstream brands portfolio. In 2013, he was instated as Marketing Manager, responsible for McDowell's No.1 portfolio leading it to become one of the largest CPG brands by retail value. He successfully assumed charge of a larger portfolio in 2015 to lead marketing for McDowell’s No.1, mainstream brands and helped anchor brand governance for McDowell’s as it forayed into emerging markets. Prior to Diageo India, Shahabadi has worked with leading media and communications organisations such as Starcom, GroupM and Madison in managerial roles. 

Anita Nayyar

Anita Nayyar, Chief Operating Officer, Media and Communications, Patanjali Ayurved

Prior to joining Patanjali, Nayyar had a brief stint at Zee5 as Head, Customer Strategy and Relationships. Before that, she was associated with Havas Media for more than 13 years and rose to the position of CEO, India and South-East Asia.

Before Havas Media, Nayyar held leadership roles in agencies such as Ogilvy, Lintas-Initiative Media, Mediacom, Mudra and Starcom. She has also worked as the Head of Customer Strategy at The Times Group.

Starting her career under the leadership of Nargis Wadia at Interpublicity in 1983, Nayyar has been one of the most successful women leaders in the Indian media industry.

Ankit Desai

Ankit Desai, Head, Media and Digital Marketing, Marico

Desai joined the company in February 2022, this being his second stint at the company. He first joined Marico in March 2011 as Media Manager and was promoted to the Group Media Manager role for India in 2014. In 2015, he became Head - Media & Digital Marketing (India & Global Centre of Excellence). 

Between his first and second stint at Marico, he was Vice-President & Head - Product Revenue Strategy (Entertainment) + Brand Measurement & Insights at Disney+ Hotstar. Previously, he served at NDTV Imagine and managed its marketing, brand and communication mandate. He was part of the launch team of the channel and was responsible for managing the overall marketing and media budget for the channel. In the past, he has also worked at Dainik Jagran and Mindshare Fulcrum. 

Archana Aggarwal

Archana Aggarwal, Vice-President, Media, Airtel

In her 8.5-year stint with Airtel, Aggarwal has helped improve the media product by delivering customised media strategies for each offering, as well as delivered efficient media buying and planning.

Aggarwal is a passionate media advocate with 25+ years of experience in media, out of which the first 10 years were in media agencies such as McCann-Erickson and Mindshare. She has headed media at P&G and Airtel for the last 16 years.

Deepak Gulati

Deepak Gulati, Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer, Bridgestone 

Gulati joined Bridgestone in 2018 as Chief Marketing Officer and has been responsible for setting up its marketing function in India. His responsibilities include building the marketing and retail strategy, development of products and solutions roadmap and creating innovative new business models for all the business units. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics & Communication followed by an MBA from IIM Bangalore.

He has 27 years of rich international experience across geographies like South East Asia, Japan, West Africa and India. He has also worked in leadership positions across industries in blue chip organisations like Procter & Gamble, Nokia, Philip Morris, Essilor etc. in global as well as country roles. He has led various functions like Marketing, Business Development, Strategy, Global Innovation, Business unit P&L etc.

Jaikishin Chhaproo

Jaikishin Chhaproo, Head Media and PR, ITC

Chhaproo is an astute mar-com professional with 25+ years of experience — spanning FMCG, Telecom, Broadcast and E-commerce in India and Middle-East markets. Previously, he has handled media requirements at Nokia MENA, Hindustan Unilever, Snapdeal, Godrej and Wipro. Chhaproo has also headed marketing for Star Middle-East (a NewsCorp company). Before that, he headed Strategy and Research for MCCS (ABP News, Ananda, Majha - erstwhile Star News, Ananda and Majha).

Joy Chatterjee

Joy Chatterjee, Associate Vice-President, Sales & Marketing, Mankind Pharma

He is a marketing professional with two decades of diversified and proven track record across various brands in the OTC/FMCG and pharmaceutical categories. With 17 years of experience at Mankind, he has set up the entire OTC and Ortho portfolio from scratch managing both the functions of sales and marketing. 

He strongly believes in problem-solving with a pragmatic approach to marketing management and has been a keen learner who constantly learns from his mistakes. Being a firm believer in taking marketing decisions basis facts and figures, he has been directly involved in market research, analysis, and interpretation of market data for short- and long-term market forecasts. 

Krishnarao S Buddha

Krishnarao S Buddha, Senior Category Head, Parle Products

Buddha has over 26 years of experience in the FMCG sector in leading companies such as Parle Products, Uncle Chipps, Maxwell Apparels and Excelcia Foods. Over the years, Buddha has grown to become one of the key opinion leaders within the industry in several aspects such as business strategy, branding, marketing, advertising, distribution, manufacturing and sales to name a few.

In his present role, Buddha is responsible for Parle’s entire snacks, confectionery, cakes and rusk portfolio. He is the man behind the entry of Parle into the snacking category with a portfolio comprising brands such as Parle’s Wafers, Chatkeens, FullToss and Mexitos.

Lucky Saini

Lucky Saini, VP & Head of Brand, Meesho

Saini began his journey with Meesho in 2021. In his current role, he oversees and undertakes the responsibility of brand building and communications at Meesho. Saini’s in-depth experience in the areas of brand management and marketing strategy experience has contributed immensely to Meesho’s accelerated growth over the past few years. Prior to his current role, Lucky held leadership positions at Vedantu, Dentsu, and Flipkart.  

Maithreyi Jagannathan

Maithreyi Jagannathan, Vice-President, Healthcare, P&G Indonesia

Jagannathan is a highly accomplished marketer with over 16+ years of brand-building experience in Procter and Gamble. Prior to serving in this role, she was Vice-President - Brand and Brand Function Leader, Personal Health Care AMA, P&G. 

She has led successful brands like Vicks, Metamucil, Pantene, Olay and Clairol across different geographies, including Asia, North America, ANZ and Africa. She has led the multiple Cannes-winning campaign, ‘Touch of Care’, on Vicks, which changed the growth of the brand in this region.

She is also passionate about giving back to society and leads the P&G skill-based volunteering CSR programme, which has trained over 200+ NGOs/social organisations in the last few years.

Priyanka Khaneja Gandhi

Priyanka Khaneja Gandhi, Associate Director - Integrated Marketing Communication & E-commerce Marketing, Colgate Palmolive

She has more than 20 years of experience in functional leadership roles across India’s marquee CPG company - Colgate Palmolive, and media & communication agencies.

In her current role at Colgate Palmolive as the head of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) for India, Gandhi oversees creative, media and digital functions for the company. She also manages the overall planning and deployment of all advertising spending to ensure maximum effectiveness of the communication to deliver brand KPIs, in the most efficient manner.

Raj Joshi

Raj Joshi, Head - Brand and Integrated solutions, Onsurity

Before Onsurity, Joshi was serving as the Vice-President of Marketing at AU Small Finance Bank. He specialises in creating brands and using effective communication strategies and has an experience of over two decades. He has also worked for some of the most established media and advertising firms. 

He started his career as a senior planning and research manager at Dainik Bhaskar. He then worked for Rediffusion Y&R as the Associate Media Director. Following that he joined MEC as the Business Director in 2010. He has also worked for GroupM and Wavemaker between 2015-2019. 

Rajiv Dubey

Rajiv Dubey, Head of Media, Dabur

Dubey is Head of Media of Dabur India and has been at the helm for over 21 years. Dubey has managed and helped build many successful brands such as Real, Chyawanprash and Amla Hair Oil. The pandemic year has been phenomenal in terms of working digitally and has seen success in collaborative working during the pandemic.

Dubey is optimistic that India will come out of the pandemic’s second wave very soon and will set a benchmark in vaccination across the globe. The year 2022 will bring massive growth for all brands and bring business back to normal, he feels.

Shashank Srivastava

Shashank Srivastava, Executive Director, Maruti Suzuki

In his current role, Shashank Srivastava is responsible for the Marketing and Sales vertical of India’s largest carmaker and is in charge of both Brand Marketing-related activities as well as Retails Channel management.

Srivastava joined Maruti Suzuki as a Management trainee almost 31 years ago and has been through various functions such as Corporate Planning, Marketing, Advertising, Logistics, Field Sales, Dealer Development, Institutional Sales, Sales Planning and International Marketing.

Smita Murarka

Smita Murarka, Chief Marketing Officer, Duroflex

Murarka is a seasoned retail marketing professional with over 18 years of work experience across international brands like Lifestyle, Amante, Splash, Bossini, Louis Philippe, Allen Solly, Kappa and many more. Her experience spans building brands in the fashion and lifestyle industry, covering diverse categories of Apparel, Accessories, Footwear, Handbags, Beauty, Perfumes, Watches and more, having steered their launch and growth in India, and thus has a deep understanding of the consumer and their fashion needs.

She is also an Image Consultant, and took to the added dimension in her career, due to her passion and experience in highlighting the true potential of people, and commitment to making people understand their strengths and weaknesses and thus present themselves in their best avatar.

Varun Ganjoo

Varun Ganjoo, Co-Founder and Marketing Director, Baazi Games

A graduate from Manipal University, Ganjoo is a creative thinker. He envisions building bridges between products and players with a creative foundation that cements a place in the heart of consumers. As part of Baazi Games, he looks after all the verticals (PokerBaazi.com, BalleBaazi.com, and CardBaazi.com) to drive the growth of the business.

Ganjoo has been an integral part of Baazi Games since its inception. He has always been keen to drive a better atmosphere through his humour while also setting examples through his hard work, which has been instrumental in the brand’s success. Prior to becoming a part of the leadership team at Baazi Games, he pursued his trade at TCS.

Vinay Joshi

Vinay Joshi, Marketing Manager - Indian Sub-Continent & Maldives, Brown-Forman

Joshi leads the marketing function for Brown-Forman across the Indian subcontinent and Maldives markets for the global spirits major. In his current role, he is driving the marketing strategy and growth for Jack Daniel's Trademark, Finlandia Vodka, Woodford Reserve Bourbon Whiskey and El Jimador Tequila in the region.

Joshi is a brand marketing professional with more than 12 years of experience in the Indian FMCG industry. He possesses deep-rooted expertise in building strong consumer brands across different categories such as personal care, nutritional beverages and malted food and has been part of the teams which built several consumer brands into strong category-leading brands. 

Info@BestMediaInfo.com