In a recent LinkedIn post, Chandni Shah, CEO, Kinnect & 22feet Tribal, said one of her first decisions as CEO would be to move away from “serial pitching”; the focus over the next one year would be to onboard only five new clients. As Kinnect’s founder eases into the new Omnicom system, she tells Alokananda Chakraborty that the agency will prioritise scaling by deepening relationships and not by bumping up numbers — either of people or of offices. Excerpts from the interview.
Q: What has been the biggest plus for Kinnect & 22feet Tribal from the IPG–Omnicom merger?
A: The biggest upside is access to a far larger ecosystem of thinking, talent, and capabilities. What’s reassuring is that the structure also recognises the importance of strong local capabilities. Kinnect was built as an integrated creative powerhouse with in-house strengths across media, influencer marketing, content production, CX, and technology. Within Omnicom Advertising India, that integration becomes even more powerful. We continue building integrated solutions for our clients, while also becoming a strong collaboration partner for agencies across the network like McCann, BBDO and TBWA Lintas.
So we get the best of both worlds. The scale and intelligence of a global network, combined with the entrepreneurial DNA that built Kinnect.
Q: Are Indian agencies ready to deploy AI capabilities to improve efficiency? How would you rate the industry’s AI readiness?
A: For us, AI has already moved beyond being a buzzword. We have been embedding it into our processes for a while now, so today it functions as an everyday tool rather than a novelty. We have to understand what AI is truly good at. At its core, it is an efficiency building tool. It can accelerate research, streamline production workflows, optimise media and analyse large datasets much faster than before. What it cannot replace is the creative value that humans bring. Ideas, cultural intuition and emotional storytelling still come from people. AI helps remove operational friction so creatives can spend more time doing what they do best.
At the network level, Omnicom has also invested heavily in AI through platforms within the Omni ecosystem, connecting data, commerce, media planning and measurement into a unified system. As an industry, we are still early in the journey. AI will make us faster and smarter, but human creativity will remain the real differentiator.
Q: Any specific areas where the industry is lagging and needs to pull up its socks?
A: One area where we still have work to do is representation.
As much as it pains me to say it, we need stronger representation of women across the industry, especially in senior leadership roles.
But more broadly, we are still an underrepresented industry overall. That applies to gender, orientation and even socio-economic backgrounds. Advertising shapes culture. The industry should reflect the diversity of the culture it speaks to. The more diverse the voices in the room, the stronger the ideas we create.
Q: Have client demands from agencies changed in any significant way lately? Where is the most pressure piling on for ad agencies?
A: Client expectations have definitely evolved. They don’t want many agencies. They are looking for capabilities – across all platforms. Because the business has transcended mediums. It is now ecosystem driven. Most clients would ideally like to work with a single system that can solve multiple parts of their business problem. The reality is that while most will claim, not every agency is structured to deliver that level of integration.
Clients do not want to coordinate across multiple partners solving fragmented pieces of the same challenge. It slows things down and often weakens the original idea. That is where collective ecosystems like Omnicom become powerful. When different capabilities sit within the same network and collaborate closely, brands get access to specialised expertise while still working within a connected system.
For clients, this also reduces complexity and increases accountability. That is why integrated models are becoming increasingly valuable.
Q: How are you planning to scale Kinnect & 22feet Tribal going forward?
A: For us, scale has never meant simply adding more people or more offices. It comes from going deeper with the brands we work with. We believe in scaling by deepening relationships and going all in on our clients. When you truly understand a brand’s business and invest in its outcomes, growth tends to follow naturally.
Many of our strongest partnerships today have grown that way over several years. Going forward, our focus will remain on strengthening integrated capabilities across strategy, creativity, media, influencer and technology, and using that integration to solve bigger business problems for our clients.