About

I’m a Creative Director at Affinity and an independent thought leader working at the three-way intersection of creative, marketing, and technology — one of the few practitioners who has worked across all three disciplines at a global level.

Based in Mumbai. 20+ years across print, digital, web, mobile, AdTech, and B2B marketing.

What I Do

I hold three roles, and they reinforce each other.

At Affinity, I’m Director of Creative for global marketing. I direct brand strategy, lead the global creative team, and own the work that connects a B2B AdTech company to the people who buy from it. I’m also actively training the team on AI workflows — not as a productivity hack, but as a way to break the discipline walls between creative roles.

Independently, I consult. Brands and founders come to me for guidance on positioning, marketing strategy, and creative direction. I don’t run an agency. I help people see their problem clearly, then connect them with the right execution partners.

As a thought leader and speaker, I write and speak on creative thinking, AI in creative work, brand building, and the future of creative leadership. I’m available for keynotes, panels, and workshops.

My Core Philosophy

Your idea is in the brief.

Creativity is not inspiration. It’s research, pattern recognition, and rigorous problem definition. The deeper you study the problem, the more the idea reveals itself within it. I’ve built this way for two decades and I teach it the same way.

On AI: it doesn’t speed up delivery — it improves the process. Use it to explore multiple perspectives at once, find patterns across large bodies of research, and break the silos between graphic, motion, copy, and code. Generate thousands to keep a few.

Career Journey

I started as a print and logo designer in 2005, when craft was everything and the brief landed on your desk in a folder.

From there, I moved into agency creative leadership at DDB Mudra Group (Tribal DDB), working across cross-media campaigns for Reliance and gamification work for IDEA Cellular. That’s where I learned the difference between making something beautiful and making something that moves a business.

In 2012, I founded UFO Digital, where I launched the Meterjam social media campaign that earned widespread press coverage. Then Holachef as VP Product Marketing — where I introduced HolaDoodle and generated significant revenue from a category nobody was paying attention to.

From 2015 onward, AdTech: Vserv (Lead, Mobile Global Sales & Strategy), then Digital Turbine (formerly AdColony) as Creative Director APAC for six years. That’s where I shipped real ad innovations at scale — shoppable formats, dynamic creative optimization, AR ad experiences — for global brands across the region.

Since 2024, I’ve been Director of Creative, Global Marketing at Affinity, where I’m taking everything I learned in APAC and applying it to a global B2B brand.

Selected Work & Brands

I’ve worked with Samsung, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Lego, Amazon, P&G, BliBli, Nestlé, IDEA Cellular, Reliance Mobile, Viacom18, and UTV, alongside agencies like DDB, JWT, and BBDO.

A few things I’m proud of:

The shoppable ad format with real-time pricing API. During COVID, D2C brands were stuck — their brand budgets weren’t converting, and they didn’t know how to enter performance marketing. I invented an ad format that combined full-screen brand video with a real-time shoppable product layer connected to live pricing via API. We deployed it for Unilever, P&G, and BliBli, and ran 7 generations of iteration in APAC while the UK version stopped at 1.

$10M+ in brand budgets directed across APAC markets. 11 market-first creative innovations shipped. 60% reduction in creative production cycles at Affinity through AI tooling adoption.

Speaking Topics

I speak on six topics where I have hands-on, lived experience:

Creative Thinking as a Discipline — research-led ideation and the case for brief-driven creativity
AI as a Creative Multiplier — how AI breaks the walls between creative disciplines (not how it replaces them)
Brand Building Beyond the Logo — what a brand actually is, and why most companies confuse identity for brand
Creative Leadership in the AI Era — leading and upskilling creative teams through rapid technological change
AdTech & Mobile Advertising Innovation — DCO, shoppable formats, programmatic creative from someone who has built them
Global Creative & Market Intelligence — what constraint-driven APAC markets teach the rest of the world

If you’re organizing a conference, panel, workshop, or internal team session at the intersection of creative, marketing, technology, or AI — I’d be glad to talk.

Book a speaking conversation →

Credentials & Recognition

150+ creative excellence awards across an APAC career
MMA Global APAC Leadership speaker recognition
Multiple Mob-Ex Excellence Awards and Marketing Excellence Awards
B.A. in Literature, University of Mumbai
Diploma in Applied Arts, Rachana Sansad
Formal coursework in Computer Science (IGNOU) and AI

Beyond the credentials: I build things. Chrome plugins, VR/AR experiences, calculators, mini-games, and AI experiments — projects that prove the creative × technology positioning is lived, not just claimed. You’ll find them in the Lab as I organize them.