Mumbai : Publicis Groupe, after successfully launching the Drugstore in London, Sydney, Johannesburg and Zurich, will now officially start the first Drugstore edition in Asia in India to be based in Mumbai.
Drugstore India, a brain child of Publicis Groupe, is an initiative to foster relationships between large companies and early stage start-ups for mutual benefit. To help large companies avoid the ‘Kodak Moment’ and stay ahead of disruption, the French multi-national advertising and public relations giant intends to bring some of the sharpest minds from within the tech start-up ecosystem in India and the Publicis Groupe brand builders to ‘hack’ solutions on the various brands that the Groupe works with.
The Drugstore India team will be led by Anil K Nair (CEO, Digital L&K | Saatchi & Saatchi) along with a core team comprising Sreeraman Thiagarajan (Publicis), Parth Nagar and Aarti Samant (L&K Saatchi & Saatchi), Sanju Menon (Leo-Burnett), Suryasen Kundu (MSL Group) and Swapnil Puranik (Razorfish) and under the overall mentorship of Praveen Kenneth, Chairman and Managing Director, L&K Saatchi & Saatchi.
Besides helping the Groupe’s successful client brands to stay successful, Drugstore will add strategic marketing value to the emerging start-up fraternity through physical and cloud-based access to brand building resources across the Publicis Groupe. It will also collaborate with them to help them acquire scale expertise and by mentoring and immersing them on turning any business into a successful brand.
The idea took roots in the late ’50s when Publicis Groupe founder Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet started the Drugstore near Arc de Triomphe in Paris to bring multiple brands physically under one roof, with the express idea of getting ‘consumers to experience brands and for brands to get to experiment with them in return’. Drugstore India’s vision is to bring the concept of disruptive innovation thinking and prototyping to their clients and help them ‘thrive at scale’.
Innovation thinking at Drugstore India will be mentored by the best minds across Publicis Groupe companies such as L&K | Saatchi & Saatchi, Publicis India, Leo-Burnett, MSLGROUP and Razorfish.
Drugstore India will collaborate with leading players in the Indian start-up ecosystem like Zone Start-ups among others to bring some of the proven and agile innovation programs such as Minibar, Meet the Makers, Demo Days, Supper Club, Rapid Prototyping & Incubator Accelerator to capitalise on inventions and have radical outcomes in the process, products and services.
“Drugstore is a much-needed initiative in the rapidly maturing start-up ecosystem which brings into play a hitherto unexplored space of collaboration between experienced large corporates with scale and start-ups brimming with ideas and technology but needing resources. I think its win-win space for everyone. We at Publicis Groupe play the role of catalysts,” said Anil K Nair, CEO, Digital L&K | Saatchi & Saatchi.
