National Creative Director – Ogilvy & Mather India

Abhijit Avasthi

A metallurgist by formal education, Abhijit got into advertising after a mixed bag of experiences that includes working in a steel plant, manufacturing textile dyes, trading in saris and a few miserable attempts at exporting playing cards and match-boxes from India.

Currently National Creative Director of Ogilvy & Mather India, he started out as a copywriter with Enterprise Nexus in 1997 and joined Ogilvy in 1999. Abhijit has won over 300 International & National awards at shows including Cannes, One Show, British D & AD, Clio awards, Asia-Pacific Adfest, and the Abbys, besides having served on the jury at some of these shows.

Abhijit has worked on some landmark campaigns in India – work that has been popular with the man on the streets of India as well as with juries across the world. These include Fevicol, Cadbury, Asian Paints, Google, Tata Sky, Bajaj, Centerfresh, Mentos, Unilever amongst many others.

Besides other things, he likes to boast about his huge family (he has 35 first cousins!) and the fact that he has visited 23 out of the 28 states in India.

Abhijit thanks God each day for stumbling upon advertising as a career.