Saurabh Saksena represents the people and the business of VMLY&R India as the CEO. He has spent close to 30 years spearheading P&Ls, managing change and transition, driving business growth, and building deep internal capabilities across the five communications agencies and a media company he has worked at. (In Delhi, Bangalore, Kuala Lumpur and now, Mumbai)
Over the years, he has gained from working with ambitious brands in diverse categories like CPG, retail, food and beverage, technology, confectionery, telecom, automotive, e-commerce, oil and gas, QSRs, banking, and more. Thanks to these, he has built expertise in social, commerce, data and CRM, shopper marketing, full-funnel management, development sector communication, behaviour change, rural communication, and new-age media, among others. Prior to this, he looked after JWT and Ogilvy (a bespoke integration in Malaysia) and then, WPP’s Red Fuse India, the integrated communications agency set up exclusively to drive growth for Colgate Palmolive globally.
His current priorities include driving integration across varied capabilities at VMLY&R- from creative excellence, to a very strong customer experience, commerce (both offline and online) and data practice- to help drive growth for client businesses across three offices- Gurgaon, Chennai and Mumbai. The VMLY&R India leadership team is focused on fusing creativity, technology and culture to create work that’s truly connected.
Excited by all things new, he believes diversity breeds creativity. And that driving client success is the key to building growth for the organisation.
He has been fortunate to be mentored by the best, and is proud to pass it forward, so to speak, to some very accomplished talent in our industry today.
In his spare time, he likes to listen to retro music, binge-watch almost anything, cook (again, almost anything, as long as there is a video recipe and ingredients) and tries his hand at photography.
