The great communications exit: Are communicators trading boardrooms with entrepreneurship?

For years, the communications profession fought for one thing - a seat at the table.

The argument was straightforward. Communications could no longer remain a downstream function brought in after a business decision had already been made. Reputation, stakeholder trust, leadership visibility, crisis preparedness and public perception were business issues, and communicators needed to be part of the conversations shaping them.

That battle has, to a significant extent, been won.

Yet something unexpected is happening.

Just as communications has strengthened its claim to the boardroom, a growing cohort of senior communications professionals is choosing to step outside the corporations they spent decades helping navigate and build businesses of their own.

Over the past few years, senior professionals from across India's communications ecosystem have moved into entrepreneurship, setting up boutique advisory firms, strategic communications practices, reputation consultancies, integrated communications businesses and specialised outfits built around senior counsel. But this shift is not people “quitting corporate”. The motivations are strikingly different.

To understand this shift, e4m spoke to senior communications professionals who have recently moved into entrepreneurship, alongside those who have built their careers across agency and corporate environments, to explore what is changing beneath the surface of India's communications industry: what is pushing experienced professionals towards independence, what clients are now buying, whether the traditional agency model is losing relevance, and what this could mean for the future of communications talent and leadership. 

Other ambitions or corporate ceiling? 

From the outside, reaching the top of corporate communications should represent professional arrival. From the inside, the experience can be more complicated. The interesting part about this movement is that there is no single “reason” behind it. 

One thing is becoming increasingly apparent that senior communicators are not leaving because of one common trigger. Their motivations differ, but the destination is remarkably similar.

For some, entrepreneurship is an old ambition finally acted upon. For others, the market itself has changed enough to make independence attractive. And for some, the tension is the gap between what senior communications professionals are capable of contributing and what their organisational roles allow them to actually do.

For Mrinall Dey, Founder, Brevanta Communications, who spent three decades across journalism, agency and corporate communications, including leading communications at MobiKwik, the decision to leave was not about exhaustion, it was about the diminishing proportion of the job that involved the very skill he had spent decades developing. 

“Peak is a funny word. From the outside, running communications at MobiKwik while it was going through its IPO looks like the top of something. From where I was sitting it felt more like a ceiling,” he says.

Dey believes the problem lies in how senior communications roles operate inside large organisations. “A senior comms person inside a company spends most of the week managing the internal weather. Which leader wants which story. Whose quote goes where. Chasing sign-offs. The actual craft, reading a situation, shaping a narrative, knowing when to speak and when to keep quiet, that's maybe twenty percent of the job. The rest is negotiating the building,” he points to the structure. 

The observation is uncomfortable precisely because it comes at a time when communications has arguably achieved more boardroom legitimacy than ever before. The profession has spent years making the case for a seat at the table. CEOs increasingly understand reputation, trust, leadership visibility and stakeholder perception as business issues.

But having a seat at the table and having enough decision-making power at that table are not necessarily the same thing.

Yet, now comes the other side of the coin of why senior communicators are moving into entrepreneurship.

For Amit Arora, Founder, BrandVD Communications, entrepreneurship was a long-standing ambition. “My father was a businessman, and growing up, I saw the satisfaction that comes from building something of your own. That entrepreneurial mindset stayed with me throughout my career, and I always knew that one day I wanted to start my own venture.” He believed that the timing was simply right.

He interprets his shift from corporate differently, stating, “The communications function today is more strategic than ever, but like every corporate role, it operates within organisational priorities and business objectives. As an entrepreneur, I have the opportunity to work with companies across sectors, solve diverse business challenges and bring fresh perspectives to every engagement. That variety and freedom to create excited me the most.”

For Ameer Ismail, Founder & CEO, Apostrophe Ventures, the trigger was an industry at an inflection point. After 29 years at Lintas, he saw AI, digital acceleration, fragmented media and changing client expectations reshaping the agency ecosystem.

Rather than adapting to those changes within an established structure, Ismail wanted to build for the new reality. That model, Apostrophe Ventures, is built around a simple proposition: “brands don't need more agencies, they need better orchestration.”

Rohan Srinivasan, Co-Founder, Compass Communications, had already experienced entrepreneurship once and saw the move as a second coming when he saw a clear market opening. “I had run my own boutique agency previously and saw this as a second coming to give a shot at being an entrepreneur again. There’s a growing need for senior strategic counsel that goes beyond campaign execution and plain vanilla PR. Today, clients expect their agency partners to understand all platforms of communication and that’s why Compass Communications started,” he explains.

The experience economy is changing

The communications industry has traditionally been “an experience economy.” Years mattered because it brought relationships, institutional memory, crisis experience, stakeholder understanding and the ability to read situations before they turn into crises.

Previously, seniority translated into a bigger corporate role. Now, increasingly, it can translate into a business. That changes the economics of experience.

A senior communicator who has spent 25 years navigating crises, CEOs, investors, journalists, regulators, employees and reputational risks has accumulated something that cannot be reduced to a job title. It is judgement.

And the emerging independent model is effectively asking: what if that judgement itself is the product?

Ismail shares an important counter to the idea, “Experience compounds wherever curiosity and learning continue. I don't see it as inside versus outside an organisation. They are different phases of the same journey. Institutions build depth and discipline. Entrepreneurship demands integration, agility and constant reinvention. Every stage adds another layer of experience, provided you remain open to learning.”

Dey sees the external environment as one where situations compound faster because the communicator is exposed to multiple businesses and problems in quick succession. “In a few months I see more situations than I'd see inside in five years. A fintech company is worried about a regulator. A founder who said the wrong thing on a podcast. A company that needs to be known before it can raise. Different problems, back-to-back. Patterns start showing up. You start seeing the thing behind the thing.”

He also states the unsaid reality of the industry, “Inside, you're partly a diplomat. You soften things to survive the politics. Outside, my only value is telling the client the truth. The day I start managing their feelings instead of their reputation, I'm useless to them.”

Srinivasan highlights the importance of experience, “Running your own agency and working on multiple client briefs exposes you to a far wider range of business challenges and leadership styles. This diversity accelerates perspective and helps you anticipate and address issues before they become crises.”

Arora mentions, “I do not think it is about one being better than the other. They simply offer different learning experiences. Inside a company, you gain a deep understanding of one business, its culture and long-term priorities. As a consultant, you are exposed to multiple sectors, leadership teams and business situations at the same time. That diversity accelerates learning because you are constantly solving new problems.” 

That may be the emerging value equation that professionals should focus on - Corporate careers build depth. Independent careers can build breadth.

When judgement gets an invoice, its value becomes visible

There is also an uncomfortable economic paradox in communications.

The better the function performs, the less visible its success can become. The value is often in what did not happen.

This makes senior communications judgement difficult to price inside organisations. Outside, it becomes much easier.

Dey captures the paradox, underlining, “When comms is working, nothing happens. So, the senior person who quietly kept things from going wrong gets read as overhead, not insurance. Then they leave. And suddenly the company is paying a day rate for the same judgement they had on salary, except now it's a line item someone actually notices. That's when the value becomes visible, when there's an invoice attached to it.”

On the other hand, that does not necessarily mean corporations do not value their senior communicators.

Srinivasan explicitly rejects that interpretation, arguing that corporations increasingly recognise communications as a core strategic function. He argues, “Working for yourself allows you to bring a unique and external perspective that organisations seek.”

For him, the more important shift is already happening inside corporations.

“To me, the bigger picture lies in the fact that corporations are seeing and valuing communications as not just a supporting role but as a core strategic function,” he further adds.

Arora frames that value around what happens when the stakes are high, “The real value of communications is not in writing press releases or organising events. It is in helping leadership take the right decisions during critical times, protecting reputation, and building trust with stakeholders. That kind of judgement comes only through years of experience. Organisations often recognise its true value during a crisis or when they need an external perspective that challenges existing thinking.”

Ismail also pushes back against the idea that institutions simply fail to recognise the value of senior people.

“Strong institutions understand that people create value, but institutions endure because they are built on values, culture and systems. When senior leaders leave, relationships naturally transition and there may be short-term business impact. But great organisations continue to evolve. Likewise, experienced leaders often discover they can create value in new ways by bringing together expertise across disciplines rather than operating within traditional boundaries.”

This somewhere represents that the market is creating new ways to package, price and deploy that talent.

The client is no longer buying “PR”

The supply side is changing because the demand side is changing. The entrepreneurial shift cannot be separated from what clients now expect.

Clients increasingly arrive with problems that do not respect traditional communications categories.

Arora points to growing demand for CEO and founder positioning, crisis preparedness, employer branding, digital storytelling, ESG communication, investor communication and strategic content. “The biggest change is that clients are no longer looking at PR in isolation. They are looking for integrated communication partners who can manage every aspect of their brand reputation through one strategic lens,” he elucidates.

Srinivasan describes the transformation through the convergence of disciplines. “In today’s environment clients expect their agency to understand the increasing convergence of marketing, communications and digital media. What’s happening around us with many economic uncertainties and the impact of AI means that I need to ensure what we deliver is not only coverage led but business outcome and impact led.”

Whether it involves public scrutiny or organisational transformation, communications increasingly has to connect directly to business strategy.

However, Ismail offers a sharpest articulation of the structural shift, mentioning, “The boundaries between communications disciplines have almost disappeared. For years I advocated integrated communications. Today, clients are actively demanding it. The biggest gap today isn't capability - it's integration. Clients don't wake up thinking they need a PR agency, a creative agency, a social agency, or a digital agency. They have business problems that require integrated solutions.”

Dey articulates several client mandates that have changed materially. First is that the Founder reputation is now its own mandate. Secondly, communications through fundraising and listing. Lastly, and this one is new, defending against your own internal noise.

He explains, “Ten years ago, the company had a reputation and the CEO sort of sat behind it. People are hiring me to manage the person, not just the company. Next, communications through fundraising and listing used to be handled quietly, a bit of banker input and a bit of PR. I lived this at MobiKwik. The narrative that carries an IPO doesn't start when you file the prospectus, it starts a good 18 months before, and it shapes how you get valued when you finally list. That's a specialist job now, and most companies work it out too late.”

And then there is an increasingly complicated internal-external reputation loop. “Employees on Glassdoor, anonymous forums, leaks to reporters. Five years ago, the threat was mostly external. Now a good chunk of reputational risk walks out of your own building. Nobody had a real playbook for that a decade ago.”

The growth of boutiques is not necessarily about creating smaller versions of large agencies. It is about creating different units of value.

Which leads to another question for the industry - Are clients increasingly buying the founder before they buy the firm?

Communications has reached the boardroom. But has it reached the decision?

This is perhaps the most important contradiction in the current communications scenario.

The profession has spent years arguing that reputation is a business asset.

It has increasingly been invited into discussions around transformation, crisis, leadership, ESG, investor relations and stakeholder trust.

Yet one unresolved issue remains: what happens when reputation and business priorities collide?

Here, Dey shares a recurring boardroom tension, “The first, who owns reputation. Everyone in the room agrees it matters, right up until it costs something. A product delay, an uncomfortable disclosure, a leader being told no. Then reputation quietly loses to the quarter.”

“The second, what influence is actually worth. Boards are comfortable with numbers. Reputation and trust don't sit neatly in a spreadsheet, so they get treated as soft, right until the moment they're the only thing standing between you and a very hard week.”

Srinivasan sees the boardroom differently.“There was nothing left unresolved as boardrooms have always understood the importance of reputation.”

But he believes the nature of the conversation has evolved. “Rather than solving, I would say solutions and strategic roadmaps are now geared towards helping leaders embed reputation thinking into decision making from the very beginning making communications a driver of business outcomes.”

Arora points to trust as the bigger unresolved issue. He identifies that information now travels through employees, customers, investors, social platforms and AI-generated content simultaneously. Another challenge was ensuring that communications had a seat at the strategy table and not just at the execution table. Leadership teams increasingly recognise that reputation is a business asset, but many organisations are still figuring out how to align communication with business decisions, especially during periods of rapid change or crisis.

“These are exactly the conversations we are helping clients navigate today. Clients are looking for strategic advisors who can connect business priorities with effective communication, and that is where we see the greatest value,” Arora mentions.

Ismail takes the argument further, stating, “Today the conversation isn't simply about communications. It is about enterprise value, trust, influence and relevance. Reputation has become significantly more complex because every business decision now has multiple audiences and immediate consequences. Communications can no longer be treated as a downstream function. It needs to be integrated into business decision-making from the beginning.”

That difference is useful because it shows that the shift is necessarily about the location and nature of influence changing in the communications landscape.

Moving ahead, answering what kind of conversations around reputation, influence or leadership communication were repeatedly left unresolved, Dey expresses, “I’ve watched that play out at the very top of Indian business. The legal battle between two top industrialists, which I worked on from the agency side, was reputation, governance and personal standing all colliding at once, and even there, with the biggest names in the country in the room, nobody had a clean way to settle it.”

“The unresolved conversations are basically my business now. As an outsider I can say things the in-house person can’t say without risking their standing. I’m not angling for the next promotion, so I can be the person in the room who tells the founder the truth. That’s the job I couldn’t fully do from inside. It’s the one I do now,” he says, explaining his contribution as an entrepreneur.

The bigger role is no longer necessarily the better role

For decades, professional ambition in communications could be measured through scale.

More people. More markets. More budget. More responsibility. A larger corporate title.

However, entrepreneurship introduces a different definition of progress. For some of these professionals, success is now measured by the ability to choose the problems they solve, the people they work with and the kind of advice they are willing to give.

Arora describes that change, “For me, it is no longer about the title or the size of the role. It is about creating impact, building long-term relationships with clients, mentoring the next generation of communicators, and creating an organisation that clients trust for strategic counsel.”

Ismail is equally clear about the change, “I would respectfully say, ‘No, thank you.’ I am deeply grateful for everything my corporate journey gave me, but entrepreneurship has fundamentally redefined success for me. The goal is not simply to create another consultancy. It is about creating an ecosystem where experienced leaders, emerging talent, technology and AI come together to solve meaningful business problems differently. And there is a larger canvas ahead.”

Srinivasan says he is enjoying being a second-time entrepreneur and now measures success through client partnerships and meaningful impact. “In my previous roles, success was measured in client partnerships and creating meaningful impact. This success benchmark is what I believe in today and how I measure mine and Compass Communications’ success,” he illustrates. 

Dey responds, “A year ago I might have hesitated on that answer, so it surprised me too. A bigger role is still the same shape of job. More scope, more people, more approval chains, more of my week spent managing the building.”

His definition of success has shifted. He shares the breath of fresh goals, entrepreneurship has given him, “It used to survive the board meeting. Now it's a founder calling me before they do something stupid, listening, and not doing it. That's a real outcome. I can point to it.”

These are not necessarily anti-corporate positions. In fact, the irony is that the corporate system created much of the value these professionals are now commercialising independently.

The next five years could split communications into two economies

If the movement continues, the implications go beyond the number of boutique agencies in the market. The communications industry could become increasingly bifurcated.

At one end will be high-volume execution: content production, monitoring, media lists, reporting and routine communications tasks increasingly supported or automated by AI.

At the other will be high-trust advisory: reputation, crisis judgement, CEO counsel, stakeholder strategy, transformation and complex decision-making.

The middle is where the disruption could be most significant.

Dey predicts, “The industry won't shrink. It'll split. High-volume, low-judgement work at one end, done cheap by technology. High-judgment, high-trust work at the other, done by a small number of experienced people.”

At the other end, he expects senior counsel to become more valuable that could accelerate the rise of independent senior advisers. “You'll also see a lot more people like me. In fact, we are seeing this happening. Senior comms leaders are leaving to set up small, sharp advisory practices instead of climbing one more rung inside a company. Think about how senior lawyers and bankers went independent. Comms is on the same road, just a few years behind,” he emphasises.

Ismail similarly expects technology to become deeply embedded across strategy, creativity and execution, while arguing that human judgement will remain the differentiator. He predicts that the future model will combine “senior strategic stewardship with technology-enabled execution.” The result will be a move away from siloed services towards integrated problem-solving, with success measured less by volume and more by business outcomes.

Arora expects more senior communications professionals to establish specialised advisory firms. “The role of a communications professional will move beyond media management to influencing business decisions, managing stakeholder trust and protecting reputation in a very dynamic environment. The future belongs to communicators who understand business first and communication second,” he asserts.

Srinivasan sees a number of boutique and independent agencies coming to the fore as consolidation and restructuring continue.

If AI takes over more of the execution layer and experienced professionals move into senior independent advisory roles, where does the next generation acquire judgement?

This is not simply a talent-development question. It could become the industry's biggest structural challenge.

“The comfortable middle, the mid-level generalist, is the part that's in trouble,” Dey cautions.

Judgement is not an application that can be downloaded and installed into humans. It is learned through real-time experiences such as proximity, repetition, failure, observation and being in the room when experienced people make difficult decisions.

If AI takes over more routine work, senior advisers become independent, and agencies increasingly organise themselves around specialist expertise and networks, the traditional middle of the communications profession could be squeezed from both sides.

Dey puts it, “If the middle hollows out, where does the next lot learn judgement? You don't get it from a machine. You get it from being in the room with someone who's done it before.”

The industry's future therefore presents a paradox.

Because the ability to know when to speak, when to stay silent, when a founder's instinct is dangerous, when a crisis is actually manageable, when a business decision will create a reputational problem six months later, all of this cannot necessarily be learned from a prompt or a playbook. It is accumulated through proximity to experience.

And that creates a paradox.

The same market conditions that make senior judgement more valuable may also make it harder for younger professionals to acquire.

What exactly is the Great Communications Exit?

The Great Communications Exit, then, may not be an exit from the profession at all.

It may be an exit from the institution as the primary vehicle through which communications expertise is created, valued and rewarded.

The real story here may not be that senior communications professionals are leaving corporations. It is that the definition of what comes after seniority is changing.

And this shift deserves to be watched other than the rising number of boutique firms.

Because if senior communicators can increasingly monetise their judgement outside the organisation, what will corporations need to do to make staying inside equally valuable?

The issue is not whether communications has earned its seat at the table. It has. The question now is whether the profession can give its most experienced people enough room at that table to actually influence the decisions being made.

If it cannot, the next communications exit may not be a handful of senior professionals choosing entrepreneurship. It could become a structural shift in where the industry's best judgement lives.

And that brings the Great Communications Exit back to its starting point.

The senior communicator who leaves a corporation is not necessarily abandoning the institution, the profession or even the idea of scale.

They may simply be recognising that after 20 or 30 years, the most valuable thing they have accumulated is not their designation. It is the ability to recognise patterns, understand consequences, challenge leadership, navigate ambiguity and know what to do when there is no playbook. That expertise can now be packaged, deployed and priced independently.

The question for the communications industry is what happens next!!!