About Us
Who we are
Born out of strong telco roots, and designed to be digital champions in a disruptive world where change is truly the only constant. We are breaking new boundaries each day as we continuously reinvent and refine ourselves. Because the simple fact is, what we’re attempting to build does not yet exist.
So there are no templates to follow.
But we can attempt to put our best foot forward. At all times.
Our Vision
We exist to make our Customers and People win
Our Manifesto
At ADA, it all begins with the Data
Numbers, really. But numbers that paint pictures
Pictures of people and how they live, travel, work and play
Pictures of how they consume
Pictures that tell us stories
Armed with these staggeringly precise and insightful customer portraits
And our capability to seamlessly fuse data, media and creative
We are able to create and deliver compelling and persuasive campaigns
That deliver disproportionate business outcomes
Outcomes that are not fluffy. Or vague
Leads, acquisitions, conversions, and sales – data that measures client’s success
Because, you see, at ADA, it all ends with the Data, too.
News
30 August 2019, Shangri-la Hotel, Singapore – Big wins were waiting for us.
ADA Bangladesh celebrates its office launch with industry leads and marketing legends.
On 9 May, at the Sheraton Petaling Jaya Malaysia, ada Malaysia took Bronze for Most Effective Use - Consumer Insights
Malaysia Social Media Week 2019 (MSMW2019) gathers brands, social influencers and industry experts to explore social trends in Malaysia.
Held at Eastin Hotel on 25th April, Mahesh pitched the case study of Malaysia Airlines #MostHappening11.11 campaign to an esteemed panel of 24 CMO judges. By evening we walked away with a Gold in the Consumer Services category
Meet our Leaders
Srinivas Gattamneni
Srinivas also serves as Chief Portfolio Officer at Axiata Digital where he oversees all M&A, portfolio operations and investments for the Axiata portfolio of companies in digital advertising, digital financial services and platforms. He is concurrently a board member of Unlockd, Storeking, and Adknowledge Asia.
Before joining Axiata, he founded PayZazz, a UK based mobile payments startup. Prior to that he headed Corporate Venturing at ARM Ltd. in Cambridge, UK and also led China operations for Motorola Mobile Devices software group in Shanghai.
Srinivas holds an MBA from London Business School and B.Eng from National University of Singapore.
CEO
Anurag Gupta
Anurag has more than two decades of experience in building teams, creating and executing integrated, complex communication programs spanning insights, creative, new and traditional media, and CRM. He has been in leadership roles at leading integrated communication agencies – Wunderman/Possible, WPP Team P&G Asia, DDB Mudra Max, Geometry India, Draft Worldwide East Africa, managing large teams, and working with top clients like Unilever, P&G, BP, Samsung and Vodafone. While at Wunderman, he led WPP’s largest horizontal team in Asia for P&G where he built a bespoke team of integrated communications experts to manage all in-market activities for the FMCG brand. He has more than 300 local, regional and international awards to his credit, including Cannes Gold, and AMEs Asia Gold. Anurag is also a non-executive board member and advisor for a mobile start-up, Skrilo.
Chief of Agency & COO
Fariq Cader
Started his career at Arthur Andersen affiliate and moved on to Dialog Axiata where he held various management positions in different areas like, Credit Management, Fraud Management, Revenue Assurance, Corporate Finance, Finance Operations, New Business Development and currently is the Vice President of –Digital Services. He counts over 20 years of experience of which 15 years in the telecommunications field. During this period he was also with the management team of “Etisalat” group’s operation in Saudi Arabia. He is a board member of many digital ventures in Sri Lanka and also a consultant to the World Bank on Mobile Money.
Chief Financial Officer
Stephanie Caunter
She played pivotal roles in strategic transformational projects such as PwC’s rebranding exercise, and pioneered PwC Malaysia’s digital marketing efforts.
A Diversity and Inclusion advocate who used to write a monthly personal column, ‘Changing Hats’, she also enjoys mentoring young talent.
Her pride and joy are her 2 young daughters. She runs to destress. And she’s constantly battling a serious addiction to chocolate and coffee.
Stephanie is a 3 time McKinsey Youth Leadership Academy Mentor; 2 time Lean In Malaysia Career Programme Mentor; and received the Gold for Best B2B Marketer at the Malaysia CMO Awards 2018 . She graduated with a BS in Engineering from Cornell University, NY, USA.
Head of Marketing
Bilal Waris
As the Head of Human Resources, Bilal leads all core HR functions. He is an advisor and coach to team members across all departments, teams and levels. He is an innovative HR leader and a specialist in organizational development with experience of different markets. Bilal is ambitious and aims to turn ada into a learning and agile organization, ready to help customers win whilst insuring that the people also win too. “I’m not here to police, I’m here to inspire”.
Head of Human Resources
Dai Yoshizawa
Dai joins us through our relationship with Sumitomo Corporation as Head of Product and is in charge of whole product management, from development to execution.
On a personal level, Dai loves travelling and has a preference for the outdoors exploring beautiful scenic spots.
Head of Product
Vittorio Furlan
As a management consultant, he has worked with clients to define and implement their digital, data and analytics strategy. Among his accomplishments, he has helped banks to drastically improve customer experience, telcos to make use of their data and education providers to improve students’ performance.
He came to Malaysia to drive the growth of EY Data and Analytics where he created a full-fledged practice offering strategy, data science & engineering, and big data solutions.
On a personal note, he is a strong believer of “mens sana in corpore sano” – a Krav Maga practitioner, a trail runner and a biker even. A global citizen, he is fluent in English and Italian – has lived in Europe, UK, Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand and holds impressive credentials from Computer Science degrees to MBAs.
Head of Business Insights
Mahesh Neekalantan
Prior to ada, Mahesh was employed with Ogilvy Action working with brands such as Coca Cola, Cadbury and Castrol. While at OgilvyAction, he led the office to win 3 successive Twin-Peak (Creative and Effective) awards given to the same piece of work. He also has had the opportunity to set up start-ups thrice across markets. Mahesh is an avid speaker at marketing forums, trainer for IACT and an occasional contributor to industry magazines.
Regional Agency Partnerships Director
Adrian Burton
Adrian currently spearheads ada in Malaysia. He leads a team of solution-focused industry digital marketing & content experts which help brands to solve their business pain points through an innovative and integrated approach to digital marketing. Having a deep understanding of consumer data and insights, he and his team are able to drive a data driven approach to their clients’ campaigns and maximising ROI throughout the campaign life stage. He has delivered this for top clients across Asia – in telecommunications (Yoodo, XL, Robi, Airtel), banking digital (BCA, Commonwealth bank) and wallets cash (Boost).
His experience covers global and regional roles where he led large teams on marketing-related market entry strategies, business transformation and strategic turnaround execution for digital businesses in emerging and developing markets. His industry specialisation is in the music streaming, telecommunications and banking/ fintech sectors. He also collaborated on and managed marketing budgets in excess of $100M and across 22 different countries, bringing new digital services to over 1 billion new users.
Managing Director Malaysia
Shihab Ahmad
Shihab is credited with the seamless integration of two major telcos in Bangladesh, Robi and Airtel. Shihab’s experience includes being the Chief Strategy Officer of Banglalink Digital Communications and the title of Senior Director (Marketing) at Orascom Telecom Bangladesh.
Managing Director Bangladesh
Rozy Laxana
Managing Director
Sri Lanka
Kirill Mankovski
Kirill is a seasoned marketing professional, passionate about innovation and technology. His experience spans across multiple industries and sectors from FMCG to Consumer Goods to high-technology sectors like Telecoms and Internet of Things, including start-up roles where he was responsible for building a brand from scratch.
Prior to joining ADA, Kirill held several senior management positions in Axiata group of companies, including Chief Sales and Chief Enterprise Officer roles. Before joining Axiata, Kirill held senior positions in several multinational companies such as Samsung, Philips and Siemens. He holds a master’s degree in Business Administration from Judge Business School of Cambridge University (UK) and Bachelor’s degree from Belarusian State Economic University.
Kirill is an open-minded and curious person. He has lived in 5 different countries on 3 continents and speaks 4 languages. He enjoys traveling and photography. Also, Kirill is a caring husband and a happy father of 2 wonderful daughters.
Managing Director Indonesia
Faradi Bachri
Prior to ada, Faradi was the Managing Director at Dentsu Aegis Indonesia where he achieved over 80% growth, making Dentsu Aegis Network Indonesia, the best performing market in the network within Asia Pacific. Prior to Dentsu, Faradi was the General Manager at Tequila Digital (TBWA agency) where he is credited with re-building a dying Tequila digital business from scratch. In a career spanning nearly 15 years, Faradi has won numerous awards across local, regional and global platforms.
Country Director
Indonesia
Yogi Triharso
Country Director, Reach
Indonesia
Suppakit Limboonsong
Country Director
Thailand
Ted Kim
Country Director
Korea
Hubert Marchand
Having spent over 3+ years with ada based out of the Malaysia office, Hubert has worked on numerous regional accounts, helping customers win across multiple emerging markets.
Originally from the Netherlands, outside of work he loves to travel and explore different parts of Asia – so much so, he married one……
Country Director
Cambodia
Summer Choo
Summer has been in the media industry for 14 years; her last role being a co-founder and Media Strategist of her own integrated ad agency, focusing on mainly digital and social media. Starting her career at media bigwigs like Universal McCann and OMD, she was the youngest media person to be nominated by Campaign Asia 2013’s 40 Under 40: Unsung heroes pushing the boundaries of media and advertising.
With strong strategic thinking backed by data, she helms new business development and has since onboarded several regional brands, diversifying our Singapore footprint through data and digital transformation.
Country Director
Singapore
Mayi Baviera
Mayi has been working in digital advertising for the past 13 years – starting out as a creative copywriter, moving on to digital strategic planning, and account servicing. She has helped grow multiple brands in Electronics, Telcos, QSRs, and Retail functions. Prior to ada, she has been with Cheil as their Digital Director, and FCB Manila as a Business Unit Director.
But at her heart is Horticulture. She is a proud mother to a collections of orchids and she can have healthy discussion about all things green and growing. She also holds a degree in Psychology from Miriam College.
Country Director
Philippines
Faraz Khan
Faraz is passionate about building consumer strategy and media and performance strategy for brands. For the past 12 years he has worked across the region for a variety of established clients, not only from a strategic lens of digital but the entire consumer touch-point eco-system. He has previously successfully established and led agency teams for Telco clients in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka.
Prior to ada, he was with GroupM Agencies (Wavemaker/Mediacom) in Malaysia and India, where he has successfully led key brands like Tesco & Tesco Eshop, Redbull Europe, Nissan, Renault, Pernod Ricard (Absolut/Chivas), Celcom, Hindustan Times, Max Bupa Insurance, Samsonite, SC Johnson and Shell Malaysia.
Among his awards are “Best Use of Digital, Best Use of Activation/Events, Best Consumer Insights, Best of Search, Best Idea Retail/Shopper, and Best Use of Media”.
Faraz is a movie buff and still harbours a dream of directing a movie. He loves travelling and has set his heart on visiting 120 countries or more in his life-time.
Regional
Head of Acquisitions
