Dr Annurag Batra names the moment: Samudra Manthan. 16 other practitioners define it

THE CANVAS

Shripad Kulkarni spoke to the following industry leaders for the MatheMedia Podcast - 

Dr Annurag Batra on the A&M Landscape – the Canvas for the chats with Top Practitioners:

Ajay Gupte · Akshay Gurnani · Deepali Nair · Raghavendra Katte K. Ramakrishnan
Kartik Sharma · Laxmi Shetty · LV Krishnan · Nikesh Ghosh · Pawan Sarda Priya Choudhary
Puneet Avasthi · Rajiv Dubey · Satya Raghavan · Vinod Thadani · Vivek Malhotra 

Dr Batra brings something to this moment that no other voice in Indian advertising can replicate — twenty-five years of watching this industry from the inside, with the vantage point of someone who has seen clients, agencies, and media platforms all changing at the same time. His Podcast was such a 3600 review that it became the Advertising & Marketing Report 2026 (carried in e4m recently). It did not offer predictions. It offered something rarer: a comprehensive ecosystem diagnosis, and, a clear way forward. It became the framework for all conversations. A brief recap follows. 

The Churning Has Begun

He called it a Samudra Manthan. In the ancient telling, the churning of the ocean produced both vish — poison — and amrit — nectar. You cannot have one without the other. The disruption and the opportunity are the same event. His reading of Indian advertising today is precisely that: the vish has already surfaced. The amrit is now emerging. The question is who is positioned to receive it.

Across 10 questions, Dr Batra maps the full terrain of the churning. Convergence — the long-predicted coming together of Silicon Valley, Madison Avenue, and Hollywood — has now actually happened, not as a theory but as operational reality across the ecosystem. Clients, agencies, and media platforms are all changing simultaneously, creating disruption across the entire value chain at once.

The Nokia Problem

The agency model is facing what he calls the Nokia problem — squeezed from above by consulting firms taking the strategic layer, and from below by specialist boutiques winning on speed and cost. The old holding company model, built for a world where integration was optional, is under pressure from every direction at once.

India Is an AND Market

India’s media stack has not simplified — it has multiplied. Linear television, connected TV, YouTube, social, OTT, gaming, out-of-home: not one replacing another, but all coexisting, because India is not an either-or country. It is an AND market — where the premium end is vast, the value-seeking segment is equally large, and every medium retains its unique quality and its audience.

The Measurement System Was Not Built for Truth

The measurement system the industry relies on is, by Dr Batra’s own assessment, not designed to find the truth. It is designed to be acceptable to everyone — and those are not the same thing. Broadcasters fund it. Agencies interpret it. Each digital platform offers its own metrics. The result is data without truth, and optimisation without accuracy.

AI Has Entered the Building

AI has entered the building. Old agency models will not survive it unchanged. Creative production is becoming faster and cheaper. Processes are being automated. The real question is not whether AI is being used — it is how deeply it is embedded into strategy, not just execution.

The CMO Must Become the Chief Growth Officer

And the CMO’s mandate has quietly expanded beyond what most organisational structures have kept pace with. Marketing is no longer about advertising. It is not even about marketing. It is about growth. The Chief Marketing Officer is, in practice, the Chief Growth Officer — and the organisations that have not restructured around that reality are already behind.

Ten questions. No comfortable answers. That report is the canvas. The sixteen conversations that follow are painted on it.

Read: Dr Annurag Batra’s A&M Report 2026 — exchange4media.com

THE PRACTITIONERS

The sixteen voices in this series are a distinct category. They are not observers, analysts, or commentators. They are the practitioners who are inside the churn — managing real budgets, real brands, real quarterly pressure. Between them they represent agencies, platforms, broadcasters, FMCG companies, real estate brands, measurement firms, AI studios, and global tech companies. Nine conversations. A hundred minutes each. No frameworks imposed from outside — only what is working, what has stopped working, and what they are building next.

THE SERIES

Each story publishes individually. Each one stands alone — a portrait of one practitioner, one idea, one way of navigating the shift. 

A reader in a CMO’s office, a media agency, a startup, or a business school student can enter at any point and find something immediately useful.

The sixteen stories will be published every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Followed by a definitive Media Playbook : Media OS 2026 - authored by Shripad Kulkarni. It promises to be India’s first, co-created, to-do-workbook for brands for FY 2026. We urge Leaders in Media to join us in the endeavour to build the playbook.