Praful Akali and Ashish Khazanchi appointed as jury chairs for Abby Awards 2024

Praful Akali, managing director and founder, Medulla and Ashish Khazanchi, founder and chief creative officer, Enormous, join as jury chairs for Health category and Still Print category respectively, at The Abby Awards 2024 powered by One Show.

Praful Akali, managing director and founder, Medulla has been appointed jury chair of Abby Awards 2024 powered by One Show in the newly created Health category. He is among the most awarded healthcare creative professional globally since 2015. He has had close to 50 shortlists and over 20 awards including a Grand Prix at the leading global awards Lions Health, Clio, Global, London Festival, and Spikes.

As one of the few creatively renowned professionals that has also worked as a client, last at Pfizer, Praful demonstrates how creativity and effectiveness work together. In 2016, the Last Words campaign was published in the Gunn Report as one of the only 15 campaigns globally that won a gold at the Lions and at a marketing effectiveness awards show like the Effies. In 2017, Medulla repeated the feat with Last Laugh work which won a Grand Prix at Clio and two Gold at the APAC Effies.

Praful has led Medulla to win the Healthcare Agency of the Year in 2016 at Cannes Lions. Medulla has been the only agency globally to feature in the top three agencies of the year, each of the first three years of the Lions Health. Medulla is also the only healthcare specialist agency in the list of World’s Leading Independent Agencies 2018.

Praful has served as a jury member at Cannes Lions, LIA, Clio, Effies and the Global awards. He has been a speaker at Cannes and other forums and his opinion pieces have appeared in several advertising and business publications. In 2018, he spoke on the motto of Lion’s Health, life-changing creativity on the Lions Health Inspiration stage.

Ashish Khazanchi, founder and chief creative officer, Enormous has been appointed jury chair of Abby Awards 2024 powered by One Show in Still Print category. Ashish has worked in most of the major agency networks, and on some of the biggest global, and Indian brands. He has taken Enormous from a startup to one of the leading independent creative agencies in the country. Ashish led Enormous to become the first independent agency to win a Grand Effie in the country this year.

Prior to this, Ashish was the national creative director, at Publicis Ambience. An MBA graduate from IIM Bangalore with over 30 years in advertising, he has created the iconic Jingalala campaign for Tata Sky and many others.

He has won over 300 awards with many international ones like the One Show, D&AD, Spikes and Cannes. Ashish has held leadership roles in agencies like Y&R, Ogilvy, McCann and Publicis.