Return of the prodigal: Adman Goyal is back with acquisition of Rediffusion

Sandeep Goyal has his hands full after acquiring Rediffusion, India's oldest ad agency. While the pandemic isn't making life easy, the veteran appears ready for the challenge

Adman Sandeep Goyal (right) has just wound up a meeting with the senior management at Rediffusion, after acquiring a controlling stake in India's oldest ad agency, news of which trickled out on Sunday. A formal announcement was made on Monday. But, for the 58-year-old advertising veteran, the return to Rediffusion, where he was president between 1997 and 2001, also marks his return to advertising, which he stepped away from a decade ago.
 
For the alumnus of Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) Delhi, who comes from a family of government officers in Punjab, advertising life began in 1986 at HTA (now Wunderman Thompson) after a two-year stint at paints company Goodlass Nerolac. An advertising career meant working long hours, catching tough deadlines and briefs, and pushing concepts and ideas, quite often debated for hours and even days with clients.
 
The 1980s was dominated by legacy brands such as HTA, Trikaya, Rediffusion, Mudra, Chaitra (now Leo Burnett), Ambience, Ulka, Lintas and Ogilvy among others. Print advertising ruled with brilliant headlines, body copies and visuals. As Goyal says, “Everybody in advertising back then would speak about great creative campaigns, but there was a new revolution sweeping the country, which was television.”
 
Over time, advertising moved from the print eras of the 1980s to television commercials of the 1990s to the digital era of the 21st century.

 
“I was writing, pursuing my PhD, working in areas such as mobile and social media marketing under Mogae Media, an agency I launched in 2012. There was much I was already doing,” he told Business Standard in a conversation on Monday, his first day as Rediffusion’s new managing director, working, ironically, from home.
 
The pandemic is hardly making life easy for Goyal, who has loved diving into a challenge head-on. He joined the Zee group in 2001, after heading Rediffusion for four years. He quit Zee in 2003 to sign a joint venture with Japanese advertising major Dentsu. He exited the JV in 2011, going solo with Mogae Media in 2012.
 
In the process, Goyal has worked with a cross-spectrum of clients from Maggi to Horlicks, Toyota to Airtel. A longstanding friendship with Rediffusion co-founder Arun Nanda meant that the latter turned to him when he and Ajit Balakrishnan, also a co-founder, wished to step back from day-to-day operations of the agency, which they launched in 1973. At that time, there was a third partner, Mohammed Khan, who exited the agency in 1983 to launch Enterprise.
 
The transition to a new generation of leaders was smooth for Rediffusion's co-founders who’ve had their fair share of ups and downs over four decades of running it. Nanda famously had a spat with erstwhile international partner WPP for years before picking up the latter’s stake of 26.67 per cent in 2018 along with Balakrishnan. Dentsu, which had a smaller stake of 13.33 per cent in Rediffusion, also exited the agency in 2018. The two co-founders held a 50 per cent stake each in the agency before handing over the reins to Goyal. Nanda will remain chairman of Rediffusion. Balakrishnan will be a mentor.
 
“I met Arun Nanda in 1994, when I joined Rediffusion. And he is the best boss I've ever worked with. He is a sharp, strategic mind, which never fails to amaze me,” Goyal said of Nanda. A shirt that Goyal sports on his first day at work displays the badge: Nanda Ka Banda  (loosely translated in English as a “friend of Nanda”).
 
There are gaps to fill, admits Goyal of Rediffusion. “First and foremost, I need to come up to speed with Rediffusion, which I left 20 years ago. That will be a lot of catching up to do,” he said. “The second is to improve the agency’s digital, mobile and social media capabilities. The agency has been missing from these areas for a few years now. The good thing is that I pursued precisely these areas over the last 10 years, which I will bring to the table at Rediffusion,” he added.
 
Rediffusion’s clients include Tata Sons, Parle, Tata Trusts, Tata Motors, State Bank of India, Liebherr, Larsen & Toubro, Brookfield, Orra and Dr. Reddy's among others. These clients have moved with Goyal, who proposes to engage with them closely to understand their requirements better.
 
Though Goyal steers clear of discussing the acquisition size, he does provide some numbers on Rediffusion’s total staff strength, which stands at around 250 people spread across offices such as Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Bengaluru. Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai are full-service offices; Delhi and Bengaluru are smaller. Goyal proposes to beef up operations in the latter two cities, even as he seeks to tap more clients across the country, even reaching out to former Rediffusion clients.
 
“The good thing is that the DNA of Rediffusion remains intact. This includes the quest for excellence, strong client relationships, and dedication to work hard,” he said. He was heartened to know that there are at least 35-40 people who pre-date the time he left Rediffusion. So, as he pointed out, there is a long history of client and employee retention, which are strong positives for the agency and gives him the opportunity to “build on these strengths and fill gaps”.

After Rediffusion's acquisition by Mogae Media, Arun Nanda (left) will remain chairman of Rediffusion and Ajit Balakrishnan (right) will be a mentor