Ideacafe launches ROOTS for rural urban brand communication

Ideacafe.agency has launched IDEACAFE ROOTS, a new division focused on Rural and Urban communication. IDEACAFE ROOTS is designed to support brands in reaching India's ‘Rurban’ markets, where purchasing power and aspirations have significantly grown post-COVID.

To lead IDEACAFE ROOTS, Sandip Bansal has joined as practice head. Bansal’s career in Rural marketing began in 1989 with Video on Wheels, an early structured approach to Rural marketing. He later contributed to the development of Ogilvy Rural through Ogilvy OUTREACH, then established the Rural marketing practice Xpanse Asia at Starcom in 2005. In 2012, he joined GroupM's Dialogue Factory, where he held a leadership role.

With over 35 years of experience Sandip shared that, “Helping brands build equity and share in Rural India is what drives me, and I found ideacafe to be the best equipped to drive this as it has the agility and fluidity of an independent setup which is often absent in large network agencies.” He further added , “As brands seek to increase distribution and reach across Tier2 and Tier3 landscapes roots were the answer to what is now more appropriately known as RUrban LANDSCAPES”. Sandeep elaborated saying, “My focus is going to remain on aggregating and creating scalable , sustainable models that best address brand objectives at the local level, setting up our own teams that understand the need on ground rather than depending on outsourced assistance like network agencies are accustomed to do.”

Joining Sandip as part of the senior leadership team is Shweta Lamba as business head of experiential. With over 14 years of diverse experience in marketing, Shweta brings expertise in Intellectual Properties, Key Account Management, and experiential solutions.

Throughout her career, Shweta has forged strong relationships with industry leaders, managing key accounts for brands such as P&G, Britannia, Mahindra, Mondelez, and Duracell. Her background in Urban and Rural Activations, Lifestyle Events, and Product Promotions positions her to lead experiential strategies for clients.
Before joining Ideacafe Roots, Shweta held roles at organisations, including Entertainment Network India (part of Times of India), Big Magic (part of Reliance), and GroupM’s Dialogue Factory.

Also joining the team is Amish Morjaria as national operations head - Roots. Amish comes with over 20 years of experience in business operations and buying across Urban and Rural activations and also managing large scale manpower deployment across retail channels.

Before joining  Roots, Amish held pivotal roles at leading organisations, including Tech Smart, DDB Mudra, and GroupM’s Dialogue Factory.

Nabendu Bhattacharyya founder ideacafe.agency said “My focus is on the need of brands and the talent who can suffice the purpose of brands . While group companies are busy reducing manpower I believe certain businesses need local level manpower expertise and execution capabilities and that is the need gap for brands we would like to address. By providing accountability to brands staying on the ground and not depending on 3rd party solutions. We are at investment phase and will build credible offerings for brand needs at the point of sale. Ideacafe ROOTS started operations a few months back and has onboarded 25 plus people across markets working for over a dozen national brands and  expanding rapidly . Ideacafe roots aims to become the largest RUrban BRAND IN 2-3 years’ time” Bhattacharyya concludes.