Former senior executives of DDB Mudra Pallavi Chakravarti, Nishant Saurabh and Anand Murty have gone independent to set up a new advertising agency, Fundamental. Chakravarti, Saurabh and Murty will lead the agency as chief creative officer, chief executive officer, and chief strategy officer respectively. Chakravarti has confirmed the news to Storyboard18.
Chakravarti has been in the advertising business for close to 20 years. In her prior stint, she was the creative head, West of DDB Mudra. Chakravarti joined DDB Mudra in May 2021 from Taproot Dentsu where she led the creative function for the Mumbai office as executive creative director. She is known for her work with clients like Airtel, Aditya Birla Capital, Marico, Unilever, J&J, P&G, Diageo, The Times Of India, among others. She tells Storyboard18 that going independent is the toughest decision she has taken so far in her career, but also goes on to add, “if not now, then when?”
Chakravarti’s partners Saurabh and Murty are also former executives of DDB Mudra. Saurabh has over 17 years of experience spanning advertising networks like Grey Group, TBWA, Contract Advertising, McCann Worldgroup, and Leo Burnett. He has closely worked with brands like Asian Paints, Coca-Cola, Nescafe, Instagram, Meesho, Acko, Stayfree, Meta, among others. At Fundamental, he is the CEO and plans to keep the good old advertising alive.
Murty, on the other hand, has 20 years of work experience, of which seven years he spent working in the sales department of Reckitt. He worked on developing advertising strategies for Instagram, Veeba, Airwick, among others, at DDB Mudra.