As Chief Knowledge Officer, Ogilvy China and Regional Cultural Insights Director for Ogilvy & Mather Asia Pacific based in Shanghai, Kunal is in charge of knowledge management, consumer insight, and trend analysis across all divisions of the company in Asia, and China. He also leads the company’s sustainability practice Ogilvy Earth in China. He has spent 24 years in the advertising profession, mostly in the account planning and consumer insight functions, working in JWT & McCann-Erickson, besides Ogilvy, in India and China. Kunal set up the consumer insight function at Ogilvy in India, pioneering the use of innovative methodologies such as media ethnography, semiotics and participant observation. His work encompasses trend spotting, cultural analysis and forecasting. He has lived in China since 2006.

Kunal has worked on a wide range of government, corporate and non-profit clients in his career. He led strategic planning on Unicef projects on safe water and sanitation in Bangladesh, HIV/AIDS in Myanmar and Child Survival and Safe Motherhood in India. He helped launch the environmental magazine Down to Earth in India, and produced a series of documentaries on reforestation, wasteland management and joint forest management for Nobel Prize winner Dr. R K Pachauri led The Energy Research Institute in India. Over the last four years, he has consulted with leading financial companies such as JP Morgan, Credit Lyonnais, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Comgest, Waterland Investment and Black Rock on investment opportunities in China’s consumer and digital markets.

He is an eleven-time winner of the international WPP Atticus award for original thinking in the marketing services. He won the Grand Prix thrice, in 1996 for his paper ‘Communication Effect – A Reevaluation of Beliefs’, in 2004 for ‘The Future of Technology and its Impact on our Lives’, and in 2009 for ‘Unmasking the Chinese Consumer’. He has won Best Paper awards at the Market Research Society India conference in 2004, and at the 8th International Entrepreneurship Forum in 2008.

Kunal has led a huge variety of consumer research and trends projects in Asia, notably in China and India – mapping changes in society and consumer behavior in lower tier markets in both nations. He has studied phenomena such as the rise of nationalism in China and its impact on corporations, the cultural practice of guanxi and how brands might tap into this behavior, the rising opportunity for sustainable brands, how people across Asia satisfy their intellectual curiosity, the role and meaning of colors in Chinese society, the similarities and differences amongst the Indian and Chinese middle class, and how notions of beauty in China are fast changing due to the digital revolution. Companies such as Unilever, Intel, SC Johnson, International Hotels Group, The Economist and Smithfield Foods have drawn upon this research to shape their marketing approach in key Asian markets.

Kunal has been invited to speak at Harvard Business School, Cambridge University, London Business School, University of San Francisco, Johns Hopkins University, Norwegian Institute of Science & Technology, Mudra Institute of Communications, Peking University, University of New South Wales, Australian National University and Syracuse University. In addition, he has taught MBA and EMBA programs at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and the American University, D.C.’s Kogod School of Business. He sits on the advisory boards of the Joint US-China Cooperation for Clean Energy and Superbrands China.

He was listed in the millennium edition of the Who’s Who in the World and has authored a large number of papers and articles in academic and business journals, at Esomar, and business newspapers across continents. He is an invited columnist for China International Business, That’s Beijing, Advertising Age China，and Sparksheet. He is a frequent speaker at industry fora and seminars, and has spoken at AmCham events in Shanghai and Beijing, the European and French Chambers of Commerce in Shanghai, the Foreign Correspondents Club in Beijing and Shanghai. Kunal has been quoted in or interviewed by a wide swathe of media: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, Die Welt, Daily Telegraph, Bloomberg Business Week, CNBC, Reuters, South China Morning Post, Hindustan Times, Channel News Asia, Calgary News, China Economic Review, Global Entrepreneur, Straits Times, Economic Times and BBC Radio.

Kunal enjoys leading a double life – in his other one, he has written four books, ‘An Ordinary Traveller’, about travels in south Asia and ‘A Banarasi on Varanasi’, an insider’s perspective on the holy city, the award-winning ‘China’s Creative Imperative – How Creativity is Transforming Society and Business in China’ (which has also been translated into Chinese), and Raw: Pervasive Creativity in Asia’. He has been invited to speak at the Shanghai and Beijing International Literary Festivals. His photographs have appeared in Holiday Travel India, Shots magazine and he has exhibited his photographs in Shanghai.

Kunal is married to Sumona, and they have two young children.