"Investor relations, regulatory communication and reputation must work in sync"

In an era where communication shapes how brands are perceived by investors, regulators, media and consumers alike, the role of a communications leader has become more dynamic than ever. Few professionals have navigated this complexity as closely as Soumitra Maity, Head - PR & Communications, ShareChat & Moj With nearly a decade of experience across corporate and capital market communications, Maity has built a reputation for steering brand perception through the lenses of investors, regulators, media, and digital communities.

In our conversation for the e4m ‘In the Spotlight’ series, he shares what first drew him to communications, the unique challenges of leading communications for a platform serving India’s regional internet users, and how emerging technologies like AI are reshaping the future of the industry. He also shares insights on crisis management, executive visibility in today’s narrative economy, and the evolving communications landscape for India’s startup ecosystem.

Excerpts:

What first drew you to communications as a career?

Hailing from the early 90s, our generation was the first to witness a gradual evolution of various communication modes. From the mass adoption of the internet to a rampant fervour of social media, we lived through every cascading wave of that shift, often oblivious to the phenomenal scale of each transition.

For me, it started with a game of football. A semi-professional passion aside, I found myself drawn to an agency specialising in sports communications. What began as a way to stay rooted to the sport I loved, gradually metamorphosed into a genuine fascination for how stories are shaped, positioned, and received across very different audiences.

What kept me in my stride was the intersection of narratives and their consequences. The story you tell, and how you tell it, can shift perceptions and influence decisions — be it a brand navigating a market downturn or a startup earning the trust of its first institutional investor. Over time, this increasing curiosity became a profound craft. No wonder, I wanted to build a career around it.

You've worked across leading agencies and have now transitioned to the brand side. What's been the biggest shift in perspective since making the move?

The agency world trains you to work with agility and a widened range, and in my opinion, that grounding is integral to understanding the intricate nuances of the industry. You manage multiple mandates across sectors and the measure of a good week heavily relies on clean execution against a brief. That pace builds muscle memory: sharp instincts, versatility, and the ability to distil complex briefs overnight.

Jump to the brand side, and that relationship changes entirely. You're inside the decision-making process, accountable for the long arc of the narrative, with an intense level of business context that simply isn't available to an external partner.

To cite an example: at ShareChat and Moj, we are pioneering self-regulation of content on micro dramas, a category underscoring sharp growth (4,000 Cr by the end of 2026) in the media and entertainment sector. Working with operational, legal, and product teams threw light on something I hadn't fully appreciated before: how an infinitesimal product change is steeped in policy frameworks and user insights, and how communication around it must account for those layers without disrupting the core user experience. The business proposition and its narrative are inseparable. 

Another massive shift is how much internal communication matters. On the brand side, how the story lands with your own teams and leadership is just as critical as the way it lands with media or investors. 

What makes leading communications at ShareChat uniquely complex compared to other brands? How do you manage communication for a platform that serves India's diverse regional audiences?

Indian communication professionals have a unique advantage as we are groomed to handle communication diverse audiences, in comparison to the world. ShareChat and Moj communicate across several languages, capturing diverse cultural contexts, and unifying differing communities that share no single frame of reference. That is structurally different and demands a fundamentally distinct approach.

The complexity is layered. On one side, you have a consumer platform serving India's regional internet users: discerning, culturally rooted, and increasingly vocal. On the other, you're building credibility with investors, regulators, and the talent market, each evaluating the business through an entirely different lens. Holding both narratives with coherence, ensuring one reinforces rather than contradicts the other, is what makes this role genuinely demanding.

What works for a metro audience often falls flat, or worse, feels patronising, in regional markets. The answer isn't translation. It's communication that is originally conceived for those audiences, with the cultural texture and contextual relevance that earns trust over time.

According to you, what are the key elements for regional storytelling and building trust in Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets?

Growing smartphone and internet access has fundamentally changed the calculus. Earlier, reaching smaller towns required carefully curated media choices: the right regional publications, the right broadcast channels. Success was measured in reach and column inches. However, that has drastically transformed with the infrastructure and bridge for connection available.

Nonetheless, trust beyond the metros comes down to two things, both central to the ethos of ShareChat and Moj: authentic language (meaning communication originally conceived in the regional tongue rather than translated into it) and recognisable context (stories that reflect the actual lives and aspirations of those communities rather than projecting a metro-shaped version of success onto them).

Since you started, how has the PR and corporate communications landscape evolved?

When I set foot a decade ago, only a handful of people outside the industry could accurately describe the role of PR. It operated in the background, valued for relationships and access, measured in coverage, and rarely invited into strategic conversations early enough to matter.That has changed materially.

Stakeholder sophistication has also shifted significantly. Investors, employees, regulators, and customers cross-reference. They notice inconsistency and that scrutiny has raised the bar several notches higher for everyone.

What excites me is that communications now have measurable business impact. Even if measurement tools remain a work in progress, CXOs have increasingly come to understand the value of getting the narrative right.

You've led mandates during turbulence and transition. What is your framework for managing communications in moments of crisis or volatility? How important is executive visibility in today's narrative economy?

Turbulence is temporary, but ownership and transparency should remain sacrosanct.

The first instinct in a crisis is to slow down, say less, wait for the full picture. In regulated environments, that caution has merit. But in most situations, silence is in itself a message, and rarely the one you'd choose. Some recent moments from the India AI Summit serve as a useful reminder of what happens when brands underinvest in communication preparedness.

My approach starts with two questions: what do we know with reasonable confidence, and what do our key stakeholders need to hear right now? The second often carries more weight. You don't need complete information to demonstrate presence and seriousness. That posture alone can hold a narrative steady while facts catch up.

Internal alignment before external communication is often the determining factor. Fragmented internal messaging is almost always detectable from the outside.

On executive visibility: institutional statements carry far less weight than they once did. A good reference point is the leadership transition that one of India's largest quick commerce brands navigated. The outgoing founder's clarity and candour set the conditions for a credible handover. Leaders who show up with honesty consistently emerge from difficult moments with their credibility intact.

How are emerging technologies like AI reshaping the communications industry? How should young comms professionals prepare for a tech-first future?

AI is doing to communications what digital did twenty years ago, except faster and with deeper implications. Drafting, monitoring, summarising, translating, adapting content across formats: tasks that once required substantial time and resources can now be done in a paltry fraction of the time. That is not a threat. It is a reallocation of where real value lies.

Professionals who will be displaced are not those who use AI, but those who mistake production for strategy. If your contribution has been volume and mechanics, it will be commoditised. If your value is in judgment, editorial instinct, and stakeholder understanding, AI makes you more effective.

Everyone has access to the same tools. What separates people is what they do with the time those tools free up. Use it to build sharper business literacy. Use it to develop stakeholder relationships that create real access and trust over time.

What skills must today's comms leaders develop to stay relevant?

The skills that defined strong practitioners a decade ago — media relationships, writing craft, event execution. They remain necessary, but are no longer sufficient. What separates leaders today is what sits beyond traditional communications competency.

The most important is genuine business literacy: not familiarity with business language, but a real understanding of how companies create value, how investors evaluate risk, and how different stakeholder groups connect to business outcomes. Leaders with that fluency shape decisions rather than react to them.

Close to that is the ability to hold complexity across the full stakeholder spectrum. In a platform business or a listed company, every statement is being read by employees, investors, regulators, and media simultaneously, through different lenses. Holding that coherence, while also having the courage to advise against certain decisions, is a skill that takes years to develop and is genuinely rare.

How do you see India's startup communication ecosystem evolving? What excites you most about the future of communications?

India's startup communications has matured considerably. The early default, a press release, a few journalist relationships, a founder LinkedIn post at milestones, has given way to more sophisticated thinking about narrative architecture, stakeholder sequencing, and long-term reputational equity.

As more startups move toward public listings or engage institutional investors, communication standards have risen sharply. Investor relations, regulatory communication, and corporate reputation can no longer run as separate tracks. They need to be integrated and consistent. 

We’re entering a rapid phase of evolution and what excites me the most is the role the comms department will play in brand strategy as the most effective teams will operate as integrated intelligence hubs, combining LLM powered insights, AEO informed content systems, using narrative intelligence, and robust analytics to anticipate risk, shape demand, and influence strategic decisions in real time.