Chief Brand Strategist

Deepak graduated from Delhi University with an Economics (Hons) degree and a MBA degree from Kingston University, UK. He began his working career in advertising in India working on a number of industrial conglomerates and FMCG product categories.

In 1996, he moved to the client side and worked for Royal Dutch Shell plc in Middle East, Europe and South East Asia.

Deepak headed corporate and marketing communications for Shell’s retail operations in Sultanate of Oman based in Muscat for four years.

He then moved to the UK to work in Shell’s global brand management team. Here he led the development of global turnkey consumer promotions to exploit Shell’s sponsorship of Ferrari in F1 (from the racetrack to the road) to promote fuels and lubricants in more than 40 countries.

He then headed global brands & communications for Shell’s LPG business with responsibility for brand strategy, advertising, marketing and internal communications. Here, as key participant and work-stream leader at board level, he isolated, evaluated and mitigated brand risk for a proposed divestment to PE investors across 33 countries.

He relocated to Hanoi as Chief Operations Officer to review Shell’s LPG business and develop a restructuring strategy for its joint venture in Vietnam, before returning to India.

Deepak set up brand:architects in October 2008