e4m IMA South 2025: Lulu Group & Maitri Advertising Works take home top honours

The fifth edition of the much-awaited Indian Marketing Awards (IMA) South was held today, August 1, in Bengaluru. The prestigious event celebrated and honoured outstanding brands, talent, content, and platforms from South India for their creativity, innovation, and excellence. The glittering awards night witnessed the presence of prominent industry leaders, top executives, and experts from the region’s advertising and marketing ecosystem.

IMA South 2024 honours the best organisations, individuals, and teams working in South India who have expanded their presence across the region with their impactful strategies and outstanding work. At the awards night, Lulu Group & Maitri Advertising Works bagged the top honours for their outstanding work, creativity and innovation. While Lulu Group was awarded the ‘Brand of the Year’ title, Maitri Advertising Works was named the ‘Agency of The Year’.

Coming to the metal tally, Lulu Group won 12 metals, including 4 golds, 6 silver and 2 bronze metals across categories while Maitri Advertising Works bagged 17 metals in total for its exemplary work. The agency took home 5 gold metals, 8 silver and 4 bronze metals across categories. Among the other key winners that won the most metals were Flipkart Internet, Havas Media, Divo, Hiveminds, Amazon Prime Video, Wipro, ShareChat and Jio Star India - Star Vijay.

IMA South recognises, honours and celebrates a diverse set of companies, which have their corporate office and/ or have a marketing division headquartered in South India. The awards were also open to firms headquartered in other states, but have created and run a campaign for the South market.

The prestigious awards recognise and celebrate exceptional marketing achievements in India across 4 prime categories and one excellence category, which are further divided into sub-categories. The broad categories are - South Awards for Stages of Brand Building; South Awards for Communication, South Awards for Special Marketing, South Awards for Start-Ups/Emerging Players, and South Awards for Excellence/Special Recognition.

An esteemed jury panel comprising of industry luminaries and distinguished leaders from marketing and advertising world deliberated and finalised the winners of IMA South 2025. This year, the jury was chaired by Sridhar Balakrishnan, Group CEO, Duroflex Group. The other jury members were some of the distinguished industry leaders, seasoned professionals, and experts from diverse fields.

The Co-Presenting Partner of IMA South 2025 was Mediakart, AI & Data Partner was Salesforce while The Hindu was the Gold Partner.

Here’s the complete list of winners: