Sidharth Rao and Madhu Sudhan launch mar-tech services venture, Punt

Sidharth Rao was the former group CEO of Dentsu McGarryBowen Group and the co-founder of Dentsu Webchutney, which was the Global Agency of the Year at Cannes Lions in 2022. Madhu Sudhan has led growth teams at SaaS companies such as Lio, Sensehawk and has founded startups Loanzen & Voxapp. Earlier this year, the duo announced the launch of Punt Partners, India’s first full-serviced martech venture that uses first party data, technology and design to deliver better user retention for brands.

The company aims to target the $100 billion digital services opportunity at the intersection of marketing and technology.

Unacademy’s CMO, partner Karan Shroff quits

Shroff is the first partner named by Unacademy in recognition of his contribution in helping build Unacademy into a known brand.

E-learning platform Unacademy’s partner and chief marketing officer Karan Shroff has quit. In September 2021, he was promoted as partner at the company.

Govt directs ad agencies to ensure strict compliance of guidelines on surrogate advertisements

98% of these processed ads required modification to align with regulatory standards. Over the last three years, ASCI has also reported 1085 cases of advertisements that were in direct violation of law to both central and state regulators. 765 of these were illegal betting ads and 320 were direct liquor advertising.

The directions come in the wake of surrogate ads being noticed in the recent sports events that were televised globally.

People are bored and they want to see the Nothing team bring some change: Carl Pei

Kunal Shah in conversation with Carl Pei during a Cred Curious session. Pei said, "We believe in functional design where everything needs to have a function. Even if it looks cool, there needs to be a functional element. Some brands can focus on ornaments, but that is not what we do."

Highlights from a conversation between Cred’s Kunal Shah and Nothing founder Carl Pei.