Ozone Media appoints Yuzdi N Badhniwalla as VP, marketing, sales and alliances

Badhniwalla will lead the ad sales function at Ozone Media. He will be based in Mumbai

After quitting Starcom IP, the digital arm of Starcom MediaVest Group, as general manager two months ago, Yuzdi N Badhniwalla has now joined Bengaluru based online ad network Ozone Media as vice-president, marketing, sales and alliances.

Speaking to afaqs!, Kiran Gopinath, founder and chief executive officer, Ozone Media, says, "Badhniwalla will be based in Mumbai. He will lead the ad sales teams of Ozone Media spread across three regions - Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi. He will also be responsible to form alliances or partnerships, typically with non-publishing companies. Apart from this, he will also handle the marketing and communications function of the ad network."

Gopinath clarifies that Badhniwalla will not handle the alliances formed with digital publishers. He says, "We have a separate team which ropes in publishers for the network."

Ozone Media has partnerships with more than 1,000 publishers and has already worked with more than 250 advertisers, claims Gopinath.

On his appointment, Badhniwalla says, "The pace at which the Internet is getting adapted to everyday lives is invigorating and brings complexity and depth to consumer behaviour. Digital will be a critical part of media plans in the coming future and ad networks will play a crucial role in it."

Badhniwalla is an alumnus of the Indian School of Business. He has more than 13 years of experience in the media and Internet space. Earlier, he was working with Mauj.com, a telecom solutions company of the People Group, as head of the consumer marketing function and was involved in building relationships with the channel partners. He was also managing the mobile gaming part of Mauj Mobile.

He has also worked with the Times Group and Rediff.com, where he was involved in the launch of Timesclassifieds.com and in scaling up Rediff P4C classifieds.