Mumbai-based integrated communications and marketing agency Mogae Media has acquired 48-year-old home-grown advertising agency Rediffusion India. As part of the agreement, four agency brands—Rediffusion, Everest Advertising, Rediff Health and Rediff Direct—are being bought by Mogae Media, which is owned by advertising veteran and former Rediffusion employee Sandeep Goyal. Rediffusion was founded by Diwan Arun Nanda, Ajit Balakrishnan and Mohammed Khan in 1973. Khan exited Rediffusion to start his own agency, Enterprise, in 1983.
All the four brands will operate as independent agencies. According to executives privy to the development, the entire buyout is estimated to be in the range of Rs75 crore to Rs100 crore which will be executed in two to three years.
Nanda and Balakrishnan have decided to step back from the day-to-day management of their firm. However, Nanda will continue to mentor the agency and will stay on as chairman. Balakrishnan also will step back from all day-to-day operations but focus his attention on content platform Rediff.com.
Sandeep Goyal, who also served as president of Rediffusion (1997-2001) before starting his entrepreneurial journey, will come back as managing director of the agencies.
Over the years, Rediffusion has created some of India’s most iconic and memorable advertising campaigns for brands such as Jenson & Nicholson, Eveready, Parle, Garden Vareli, Godfrey Phillips, Tata Tea, Lakmé, Telco (Tata Motors), Colgate Palmolive, Citibank, and Maruti Suzuki. Rediffusion also launched brand Airtel in 1995.
The agency currently works with Tata Sons, Parle, Tata Trusts, Tata Motors, State Bank of India, Liebherr, Larsen & Toubro, Brookfield, Orra, Eveready, Dey’s Medical, Sulekha, Danone, Sun Pharma, Dr. Reddy’s, and Audi India, among others.
In 1994, Rediffusion forged a partnership with Young & Rubicam to become Rediffusion Y&R. In 2018, founders Nanda and Balakrishnan bought back WPP’s 40% stake in Rediffusion and continue to run it as an independent advertising firm.
“Rediffusion has been known over the years for ‘advertising that became famous and part of the language and the culture of the people’, and helped brands build long term, and lasting equity with consumers,” said Diwan Arun Nanda, chairman, Rediffusion.
“‘Whenever you see colour, think of us’, for Jenson & Nicholson was a path breaking campaign. So was ‘Hum Red & White peene walon ki baat hi kuchh aur hai’ for Red & White cigarettes, ‘Annu taazgi de de’ for Tata Tea, ‘Gimme Red!’ for Eveready and the recent ‘Isko laga dala, toh life jhingalala’ for Tata Sky. Rediffusion was also responsible for creating the cult ad film featuring AR Rahman, with the very memorable Airtel brand tune that has had the highest number of downloads in history,” he added.
