Niranjan Kaushik to partner Akshay Kapnadak at McCann

McCann-Erickson is making news every day. In the latest development at the agency, Niranjan Kaushik is moving from Contract Advertising to partner creative director Akshay Kapnadak in the same rank. Kaushik is currently serving his notice period at Contract, where he is senior creative director.

“McCann has been on the cards for a long time. I’ve known Prasoon and Govind since my days at Ogilvy,” says Kaushik. He says he has enjoyed his four years at Contract, but it was time to move on.

Of his creative partner, Kapnadak, he says, “We’ve wanted to team up for quite a while and now things are finally falling into place.”

Kaushik has been part of the industry for more than a decade now. A chemistry graduate, he started off as a feature writer with one of the Indian Express Group’s magazines. In 1997, he joined Ogilvy & Mather to work with brands such as Onida, Samsonite, the Indian Express Group, Anchor Electricals, Eno, Tata Press Yellow Pages, Foster’s Beer and Tata Safari.

Kaushik moved to Batey in Singapore in 2001. From Batey he moved to LHM Singapore as associate creative director to work on Volkswagen, Skoda, FILA and Maybank. He moved back to India in 2004 and joined Contract. At Contract, he handled HSBC Premium, Shopper’s Stop, DNA, Walt Disney, Asian Paints and other brands.

Kaushik has several awards to his credit. He has won the AAAI in 2005 and 2006, and has a couple of One Show merit awards and Abbys, too, to his credit. He has been featured as a leading creative of Asia in Creative Brief Asia magazine.