Santosh Desai

Santosh is known as a ‘brand guru’ as he has an uncanny ability to connect culture and marketing. He is currently the MD and CEO of Futurebrands, India, a brand and consumer consultancy company.

Prior to joining Future Brands, Santosh was the President of McCann-Erickson, one of India’s premier advertising agencies. A post-graduate from IIM Ahmedabad, he spent 21 years in advertising, and has been strategically involved in building key brands for a range of local and multinational clients.

Santosh is established keynote speaker, where he has shared his thoughts with audiences at advertising forums in India, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo, Lebanon and Bali. He has also been a guest lecturer at various national & international universities and has addressed the global management boards of several multinationals including; Microsoft, Philips, Hershey’s, Unilever, Coca Cola and Reckitt Benckiser.

Other than speaking, he writes regularly on contemporary Indian society and on subjects related to marketing. His popular, weekly column, ‘City City Bang Bang’, published in The Times of India, looks at contemporary Indian society from an everyday vantage point. He also has columns in Mint, Media International & Tehelka. In 2010, he published his book on India titled ‘Mother Pious Lady: Making Sense of Everyday India’. A review by Outlook magazine of this bestselling book, calls Desai, “the nearest thing we have to R K Laxman in prose”.