Mudra appoints Sharmila Malekar, Ashish Medhekar as VPs

Mudra Communications on Wednesday appointed Sharmila Malekar and Ashish Medhekar as vice presidents.

Sharmila Malekar will be responsible for the entire Godrej portfolio, which includes the hair-colors and hair-dyes business, three soap brands, Ezee liquid detergent and Godrej Real Good Chicken. The other large accounts in her portfolio will be Big Bazaar, LIC and LIC Housing Finance along with some new businesses. Ashish Medhekar, meanwhile, will head the Reliance Finance portfolio which is one of the fastest growing in the region.

Malekar and Medhekar will considerably strengthen the Mudra Mumbai team. "I am looking forward to using their varied experience to manage the growth in the Godrej and Reliance businesses," says Jude Fernandes, president, Mudra. Fernandes is in charge of Mudra's Mumbai operations.

Malekar has extensive experience in the advertising industry, having worked in Lowe and Ogilvy for 11 years. Beginning her career with Lowe at 1993, she has worked on brands like Johnson & Johnson, Parachute, Liril, after which she moved to O&M in 1998. At O&M, she led the launch of HLL's direct-to-home business HLN - Hindustan Lever Network, apart from working on a diverse set of business. This saw her in the position of business head for diverse brands like Tata Motors (Sumo and Safari), DHL, Hindustan Pencils, Hindustan Lever (Dove, Sunlight) and Playwin lotteries.

Medhekar comes with twelve years of experience in advertising and communications. Starting his career with Contract Advertising, he has worked with agencies like Enterprise Nexus, Rediffusion DY&R and Euro RSCG. While at Rediffusion, he worked on the Colgate brand at a time when Colgate Dental Cream was under pressure from Pepsodent. He was a part of the team, which had re-launched CDC with the very successful "Mera Colgate" campaign. Later at Rediffusion, he headed the Chennai office and thereafter, Wunderman Mumbai. Apart from Colgate, some of the other brands that Ashish has worked on are Citibank, Thomson, Phillips, Nivea, Sony Entertainment Television, and HDFC Bank Credit Cards.

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