Rajan Anandan, Vice President, Southeast Asia and India, Google has won the IMPACT Person of the Year, 2018 Award, instituted by the exchange4media Group to recognize excellence in the Advertising, Media and Marketing domain.
He wins the award for driving Internet adoption across India, especially in Tier II and III towns, through several initiatives including ‘Navlekha’, Google’s platform for users in India who are not conversant with English, Google ‘Internet Saathi’, an initiative to bring more rural women online, and the Indian Railways high-speed Wi-Fi project, providing free Wi-Fi to consumers at railway stations across the country. He has also been responsible for accelerating innovation in India and Southeast Asia for Google. Under Anandan’s leadership, the company saw its bottom line increase from Rs 306.6 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 407.2 crore in 2017-18. The last quarter saw Google’s India revenues jump 29%, with profits rising by 33%.
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Dr Deepak Sawant, the honourable Health Minister of Maharashtra, presided over the evening as Chief Guest.
On winning the IPOY Award, Rajan Anandan, Vice President, Southeast Asia and India, Google said, “I am truly honoured that I have been given this award. In fact, I am thrilled and speechless. So, thank you to the jury, to IMPACT and also to everybody in the ecosystem; most importantly my team, as well as all our clients and our partners.”
Commenting on the IMPACT Person of the Year 2018, Mr Annurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of the exchange4media Group, said, “Rajan Anandan is the scale man, always thinking big and executing big. Global MNCs have strong tailwinds. Yet for building a Rs 10,000 crore revenue company in India, leading it well with continuity, supporting the right causes, navigating the regulatory environment well, creating and nurturing an ecosystem of entrepreneurs, being the go-to man for digital and entrepreneurship in India, Rajan Anandan is richly deserving of the IMPACT Person of the Year award.”
The other nominees for the award this year were Naveen Tewari, Founder and CEO, InMobi who led the Bangalore-based ad tech major to become India’s second most profitable unicorn in 2017, making an impressive entry into the digital advertising club; Nadia Chauhan, Joint MD & CMO, Parle Agro who revamped popular brands, Frooti and Appy Fizz and led the company to report a turnover of Rs 2,800 crore in the Rs 4,500 fruit drink category last fiscal; Sanjay Gupta, Managing Director, Star India who was responsible for Star India winning the telecast rights for IPL last year and scripting Hotstar’s success story, and under whose leadership the company has grown over three times in revenue; Deepak Iyer, Managing Director, Mondelez India who has led the company to consistently report double-digit revenue growth for four straight quarters, while growing Mondelez India’s rural business significantly; Ritesh Agarwal, Founder, Oyo, a 24-year-old college dropout who, by virtue of turning Oyo into a $5 billion company with plans to become the largest hotel chain in China, has turned his dream into reality; Sanjiv Mehta, Chairman & MD, Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), a visionary leader under whose leadership HUL’s market capitalization has overtaken ITC’s for the first time in 13 years, while also surpassing FMCG disruptor Patanjali Ayurved with steady double-digit growth in the last three quarters; Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman and Creative Director, Ogilvy South Asia and Prasoon Pandey, Director, Corcoise Films, the brothers who made the Indian advertising industry shine on the global map by becoming the first Asians to win the prestigious Lion of Saint Mark this year, the highest honour bestowed by the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity; and Sriharsha Majeti, Rahul Jaimini, Nandan Reddy, Co-founders, Swiggy, who together led the food delivery platform to become one of the fastest entrants into the billion dollar club of start-ups, making good on their promise of ‘changing the way India eats’.
Past winners of the IPOY award include Baba Ramdev of Patanjali Ayurved, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder and CEO of Paytm, Arnab Goswami, then President & Editor-in-Chief, Times Now and ET Now, Punit Goenka, MD & CEO, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd; Vineet Jain, MD, Times Group; Ambika Soni, then Minister for Information & Broadcasting; Agnello Dias, Founder, Taproot India, Haresh Chawla, then Group CEO, Network18 and Viacom18; Uday Shankar, CEO, Star India; Raghav Bahl, Founder, Network18 and Rajdeep Sardesai, then Editor-in-Chief, CNN-IBN.
The IMPACT Person of the Year 2018 award was presented by Colors and exclusively powered by Zee News, with Nickelodeon, 9X Jalwa, Shemaroo Entertainment and Republic TV as co-gold partners, empowered by Colors Infinity, with Sakal Media Group and Discovery as associate partners and Radio City and BTVI as co-partners.