Radhika Shapoorjee
President

Radhika Shapoorjee has 20 years of multi-disciplinary experience across public relations, marketing and advertising.

Prior to taking over as President of IPAN and all its business units, she was the company’s Vice President—Strategic Planning and Corporate Initiatives for over a year.  In this role she provided support to all offices in new business development, client servicing, training, systems and processes.

Her early years were spent in direct marketing and sales, and also included a short stint as a film producer. After that she spent nine years in advertising at FCB Ulka, where, as Client Services Director, she was involved in strategic planning and the creation of multimedia campaigns for large national and international brands.
 
She joined Genesis Public Relations in 2001 as a partner associate in the Delhi office, and rose to become Chief Quality & Innovation Officer in 2006.

During this time, she provided strategic and positioning counsel to clients like Max New York Life, National Geographic Channel, BBC World, Indian School of Business, Glaxo SmithKline and HP.

Besides this, she was involved in service quality management as well as training initiatives within the firm. She has also provided media training and conducted messaging workshops for some of the firm’s largest clients.

Shapoorjee is an alumna of Delhi Public School and St. Stephen's College. She is an avid swimmer and has been a national level basketball player.

Bhavani Giddu Veeravalli
General Manager, New Delhi

Bhavani Giddu Veeravalli heads the New Delhi office of IPAN. She has over 17 years of experience in Communications – Corporate & Marketing, Public Relations and Advertising spanning across several industry and business sectors.

Bhavani comes to IPAN from Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, where she has been the Head of the Bangalore and Hyderabad teams for five years besides taking on the role of Head of Ogilvy PR’s Delhi office for a brief period. During her tenure with Ogilvy PR, Bhavani has been instrumental in establishing the agency’s strong presence in IT / Technology / Healthcare / Government sectors and leading the teams on several global bands across a wide spectrum being handled from India. Bhavani’s core strengths are - her understanding of the media environment, crisis preparedness and communication, strategic thinking and the ability to create high quality communications that helps meet business objectives.

Prior to Ogilvy Public Relations, in her role as the Communications Leader for GE Industrial business in India, Bhavani has worked extensively on Internal Communications for a 4000+ team of Engineering & IT professionals. The internal campaign titled “Live with GE, Live with Pride” developed to build pride of association with GE among its employees, has won her international recognition and the coveted Management Award. Bhavani’s role at GE also involved a very high level Crisis Preparedness & Communication exercise wherein she was involved in leading the crisis team and strategizing, planning and executing the crisis communication plan for the business.

In her initial years of her career, Bhavani has worked with leading MNC’s as well as Indian businesses in the telecom, leisure & tourism, IT & Technology sectors and brings with her a rich experience and understanding of how these sectors work. She has also been instrumental in bringing India’s first coffee shop chain – Qwiky’s Coffee – a chain of “experience stores”, which kicked off a new trend in coffee drinking in India.

Bhavani has a Bachelor’s Degree in Science from the Madras University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Mass Communications specializing in Public Relations and Public Affairs.

Vinod Moorthy
General Manager, Mumbai

Vinod Moorthy heads the Mumbai office as General Manager.  He has been associated with the Indian communications industry for over 12 years and was previously with Sampark PR as Associate Partner.

At Sampark, his portfolio included a wide spectrum of clients in the media, auto, aviation, insurance, financial services, IT, wine and jewellery sectors.

Prior to Sampark, he headed the Mumbai operations of Good Relations (GRI).  His portfolio there included retail, entertainment, FMCG, consumer durables, media, hospitality, tourism, lifestyle and fashion.

He started his career in 1994 in the then nascent and still evolving Indian Public Relations industry,  with GRI in Mumbai.  In his first seven-year stint with GRI, he experienced rapid career growth, rising from a Trainee to Director of GRI’s South India operations (1999-2001).

He then returned to Mumbai to put in a two year stint (2001-2003) heading GCI, the PR Division of Grey Worldwide as General Manager.  Delivering integrated communications solutions to Grey’s clients at a national level was amongst his key responsibilities at GCI.  Subsequently, he moved back to Good Relations as Director in charge of its Mumbai operations (2003-2005).

He has also undertaken media training for spokespersons of top Indian corporates and implemented crisis management systems and strategies for leading companies.  His recommendations for Crisis Management case studies have been published in Indian business periodicals.

He is a graduate of Physics from the University of Mumbai and has a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration, specializing in Marketing, from the prestigious Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.

Anuradha Lakshman
General Manager, Chennai

Anuradha Lakshman comes to IPAN with professional and academic experience in the US. At IPAN, Lakshman manages the Chennai operations. She has over eight years of PR experience in the areas of strategic counselling, marketing communications, media relations, crisis communications, investor relations, employee relations, event management, trade shows, community relations and industry analyst relations.

Currently, Lakshman oversees PR campaigns for the Murugappa Group, Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company Limited, Parry’s Sugar, TI Cycles, Carborundum Universal Limited, Shriram Group and PSA SICAL. She is also the team lead for many leading IT players such as Ramco Systems, Scope e-knowledge Center, Maveric Systems, Ajuba Solutions, Servion Global and TAKE Solutions.

Lakshman primarily joined the Chennai office to head the client servicing team for Ford India. She played a prominent role in the launch of the Ford Mondeo. Past IT clients included Pinnacle Info Solutions, Accurum, Kanbay, Vision Healthsource – A Perot Systems, Saksoft and Bridage Corporation. She also executed an effective PR plan to position Bharatmatrimony.com as the leading matrimony portal in India. She has also steered an effective stakeholder communications and crisis management plan for Population Services International (PSI) during the launch of their direct and incisive HIV/AIDs awareness campaign in the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

Prior to joining IPAN, Lakshman worked at Stirling & Karbo, a high-tech public relations and marketing communications agency based in California. She has contributed to the creation and execution of PR programmes for several high profile start-up accounts including Juniper Networks, Sentient Networks, Equinix, Packeteer and Sigma Networks.  Addition-ally, Lakshman worked at The Algan Group and was responsible for the creation and execution of a marketing communications plan and writing of collateral materials such as press releases, press backgrounders, newsletters, brochures, fliers and web pages. She has also done internships with Putnam Investments and Birmingham Associates in Massachusetts, USA.

She has a master's degree in public relations from Boston University in Massachusetts, USA and a bachelor's degree in economics from Pfeiffer University in North Carolina, USA. She is also an avid tennis player. She was a national-level player for many years and went to study in the US on a tennis scholarship.

Sandesh Advani
Associate Director & Business Head, Bangalore

Sandesh Advani has been with IPAN since May 2004 and comes to IPAN with over eight years of experience spanning the fields of marketing communications, advertising, product development; corporate communications and public relations.

At IPAN, Advani is an Associate Director & Business Head - Bangalore, providing strategic counsel and programme execution for clients such as Fidelity Fund Management, Castrol India, Kingfisher Airlines, United Breweries, Aviva Life Insurance, Vertu International, UTI Venture Funds, Bluetooth SIG, Lucent Technologies, and United Kingdom Trade & Investments (UKTI), amongst others.

Before IPAN, Advani worked at Clea Public Relations as a senior consultant. His clients included such companies as Monsanto, Seagram and Idea Cellular.

Prior to Clea, Advani worked with the Milestone Group of Companies handling the product marketing & promotions and public relations for the group companies –Milestone Interactive Software, Milestone Entertainment, EMI Music Publishing, and FreeSpirit Entertainment. Advani was involved in conceptualizing, producing and promoting the most successful brand of FreeSpirit – Rhydhun by Taufiq Qureshi and Ustad Zakir Hussain. Rhydhun was India’s first World Music Album.

While in Mumbai, Advani also took time out over the weekends to teach students of advertising and mass communications at leading institutions like HR College of Commerce & Economics and National College.