Shalini Karunakaran Kuila

• Drafted content and engagement strategy to grow readers, advertising revenues, and communities across news cluster viz. Times of India, Economic Times (ET), and eight regional languages.
• Currently on deputation with ET to grow brand relevance with new and existing audience segments, and revenues from subscriptions, customer solutions, advertising while curating long and near-term strategic goals.
• Revenues from have grown 2x from customer solutions, 5x in subscriptions, 2 new content sections, 3 new products have been launched.

ComMutiny Youth Collective is a network of 50+ NGOs engaging youth and adolescents to actively participate in decision making of their society for large scale positive impact. Building large scale programs, securing partnerships, program design, brand marketing collaterals design, training young passionate volunteers on program execution processes and reporting.

• Defined and implemented strategies for high revenue IPs and advertiser funded programs to grow revenues 3X
• Approach suggested for the news cluster got Times Internet to make an offer to absorb me full time in 2 months.

Built brand identity, brand and revenue strategy for FactorDaily, a new-age media start-up reporting on deep tech viz. AI, drones, crypto, robotics, and the dark side of tech in India. Built a team of writers, designers, tech support, and partnerships to deliver profitable brand and revenue outcomes for deep tech companies.

At CIIE-IIM Ahmedabad, I consulted for Bharat Innovations Venture Fund and the IIM Ahmedabad incubator-Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship. The role entailed extensive engagement with fund partners to secure investments, build the brand identity and communication collaterals to launch the fund, mentored and advised communication and marketing strategies for portfolio startups of CIIE, and engaged with Central Ministries that actively seek IIM-A advice by representing IIM-A at meetings.

P&L and brand growth responsibility required widening the ET sphere of influence amongst advertisers, bureaucrats, and new audience - the youth. Launch several revenue growth and brand building IPs, new content sections targeted at new readers.

The new IPs ET Power of Ideas-world's largest hunt for business ideas and ET Young Business Leaders programs won the prestigious Grand Prix at the International News Media Awards and the Effies.

Led the hugely successful ET Wealth and ET Sunday Magazine product research, design and launch to revenue growth.

Helmed large cost saving projects in 2008, and 2012, post global capital markets meltdown to preserve profitability, build draft new efficiency standards.

Launched stores, grew footfalls, created campaigns and in-store merchandising pan-India for Future Group value and lifestyle retail formats Brand Factory, HomeTown, and eZone. Grew business week-on-week - set up 12 stores in 10 months across India, weekly store communication basis consumer buying behavior and stocks of brands at geo level to improve store throughput, and growing revenues per square foot of each store including offloading or adding brands to achieve were highlights of the stint

At Hutch (now Vi) in Chennai and Karnataka, I created brand communication, and events to build customer and business partner loyalty as operations expanded of the telecom operator,

A slew of successful brand-building efforts helped in the meteoric rise of the brand in Chennai and Karnataka, such as the hugely beneficial association with RangaShankara theatre of Shankar and Arundhati Nag - a high decibel cultural and social connection for the global brand with the local Kannadiga community. Launched India's first large-scale college Campus Connect to build loyalty amongst prepaid customers, and launch Rural Connect with self-help groups across Karnataka. These efforts helped the Hutch grow customer loyalty + win two Cannes awards, Effies, Abbys.

Post an initial advertising sales stint, I consciously switched to brand management to launch Times Card, the co-branded card with Citibank.

The role involved creating the brand identity, building customer traction, loyalty, and retention to grow the card's share in India's bouquet of credit cards. I onboarded partners to launch the first rewards program with 30+ brands for the co-brand card.