In An Industry Defined By Mergers, Takeovers And Shutdowns, What Makes Rediffusion Stand Tall?

“When the history of Indian advertising is written, it will be divided into two parts—one, before Rediffusion, and one, after,” says Mohammed Khan. Before Rediffusion, agencies used to be “fat cat” — overstaffed, inefficient. Rediffusion, in contrast, was a lean, hungry animal. 

Rediffusion was founded in 1973 by Diwan Arun Nanda, Ajit Balakrishnan and Mohammed Khan. The trio met at MCM, where they worked together. “At MCM, I could see my future agency taking shape—this was exactly why I had come back to India after almost a decade in London. And this was the team I wanted,” says Khan.

Nanda, Balakrishnan and Khan, each with their distinct but critical areas of expertise in marketing, finance and creative, and unmatched chemistry, set out to set up the country’s very own global quality ad agency with an Indian soul. The focus was on creating good, creative, memorable advertising that put their clients’ brands on the world map. And so they did, ushering into India, the golden era of advertising. 

Team Rediffusion

From clients like Bush, Lakme, Canon, Sony, Panasonic, Casio, Revlon, Jenson & Nicholson’s ad “Whenever you see colour, think of us”, Red & White’s “Hum Red & White peene walon ki baat hi kuchh aur hai”, creating the famous ‘wings’ logo for Maruti and subsequently launching their car, becoming the first ad agency in India to create a political campaign for the Congress, onboarding Colgate Palmolive business and the “Give Me Red!” blockbuster for Eveready… their days were glorious. 

Kamlesh Pandey, who served as the Creative Director of the agency from 1976-1992, tells us one of his fondest memories from working with the agency was: “My Art Director Arun Kale and I used to get so tired of walking all the way to the stage to receive hundreds of awards that we used to send our peon John to receive them.” Cheeky, but well-earned, Pandey now serves as their ‘Legend In Residence’.

But things weren’t all fun and glory. The initial days of business were rough. “We used to make calls from the shop of a kabadiwala downstairs, in the building of our first office,” reminisces Khan. They couldn’t yet afford a telephone and when clients would ask if they could “call back later”, the prompt excuse would be: “We believe there is something wrong with our phone—it can only make calls but cannot receive them.” 

The founders dreamed that one day, Rediffusion would become a one crore business (in turnover). 

Cue: Disruption 

In 1994, Dentsu and Young & Rubicam (Y&R) bought 20% equity each in Rediffusion.  Also that year, a young Sandeep Goyal joined the agency as Head of New Business. Rediffusion continued to remain bullish and bought 100% of Everest. They even launched Wunderman Cato Johnson (WCJ), pioneering the direct marketing business in India with clients like Ford, Taj Hotels and Citibank. Early movers in technology, they launched rediff.com, touted a direct competitor of Yahoo! and a significant player in the Indian internet landscape. 

However, by the 2000s, the momentum began to slow and Rediffusion faced major setbacks with Dentsu setting up independently in India and Y&R’s holding company, WPP, getting into a shareholder tussle with the Indian promoters. The next two decades were a challenge. 

After a successful stint at Dentsu, Zee Telefilms and the Indian Government, in 2021, Goyal was asked by his dear friend, Nanda, to return to Rediffusion. Along with his wife Tanya, he bought out the agency, including Everest. While he intended to bring the agency back to its glory days, it was easier said than done. 

Dr Sandeep Goyal with Arun Nanda

From the client roster, to the talent base, morale and confidence of the agency, everything was shaken. “We had to literally erase a lot of the past and our first task was reinventing the agency from a talent point of view,” Goyal tells us. He identified a fairly young creative leader, Pramod Sharma and brought back Rishu Verma to lead client servicing. 

To drive consumer insights, two very important platforms were launched—Red Lab and Bharat Lab. Red Lab, in a span of four years, has done close to 100 in-depth reports covering a diverse range of topics, changing consumer perspectives and orientation. 

Bharat Lab, on the other hand, in partnership with Lucknow University, focuses on the Hindi heartland—the tier 3s and beyond, where the next leg of India’s growth lies. In no time, old clients like Taj Hotels and Tata Power came back. Along with them, new clients like Nippon, BMW, Dabur, Zydus and more were added. 

As for technology, driven by Goyal, the agency is leading the way in the adoption of AI. Rediffusion AI Design Studio (originally called RAIDS, now Aesthetic Intelligence Lab), went commercially live about six months ago. Run by his daughter Carol, the entity is already the country’s largest in Gen AI with half a dozen private equity funds touting to take it to the next big level. “I was barely six months old when my father joined Rediffusion. Today as an active member of the team, I’m glad to be working on taking the agency to new frontiers, where both creativity and technology will help create winning brands,” says Carol. 

This time round, Rediffusion intends to play their card of ‘being ahead of the curve’ right. “With rediff.com, at some point we lost track and took our eye off the ball. This time, we have a massive lead in AI over anybody else in the agency business.” 

Goyal knows that AI is going to demolish the traditional agency as we know it. And that a DNA of creativity, minus technology and data, is not going to take people very far. Rediffusion is his very own baby. And he will feed it the bitter medicine it needs to make sure that the agency blooms into its full potential.