Google India’s former Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Nikhil Rungta has joined Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJIL) as its CMO. Rungta was earlier the chief business officer at yebhi.com, a well-known e-commerce company. Rungta has joined Mukesh Ambani owned-Reliance Jio from March 2014. RJIL, previously known as Infotel Broadband, is a broadband service provider which gained 4G licenses for operations across India.
Rungta’s previous experience in the marketing domain as well as his involvement in setting up new businesses is the ideal background for Reliance Industries Limited’s ambitious telecom venture. A Narsee Monji Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) alumnus, Rungta was the person responsible for scaling up the business of Yebhi.com. Here, he focused his energies on sales, marketing and product development. Rungta’s mandate was to create the most preferred e-commerce brand in the country and build a ‘profitable’ business.
The former Yebhi.com CBO had a four-year stint with Google as its CMO. It was during his tenure that Google-owned YouTube’s user base in India grew eight times from 5 million to 40 million in addition to making Google Chrome the most popular web browser in the country. It was during this period that Google’s India arm would launch some of the most talked about print campaigns who served to promote Google search – the most widely use search engine on the internet and Google Chrome – the Palo Alto-based company’s web browser. Rungta had also launched ecosystem-shaping initiatives like Get India Business Online (GIBO) and the Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF).
Overall, Rungta brings with him 16 years of marketing across domains such as sales, marketing and advertising. His first job after his MBA from NMIMS was as a Product Manager at Shaw Wallace & Company where he handled two of India’s biggest beer brands – Royal Challenge Premium Lager and Haywards 5000. In 2000, he would switch to Contract Advertising as an account supervisor and managed brand communications for the NIIT. After this stint, he would serve as an Account Director for Dhar&Hoon Communications. It was here that Rungta handled advertising and brand planning for brands such as Revlon, Real Juices and Aiwa. In 2003, after a switch to McCann Erickson India as a Client Servicing Director, he worked with Microsoft XBOX and Mastercard.