Ugaoo

Currently building Ugaoo’s brand muscle from the inside out, I work directly with the CEO and marketing team to turn this homegrown gardening company into a culture-forward, top-of-mind brand.

From shaping brand strategy to rolling out scroll-stopping campaigns, I drive initiatives that don’t just look good, they move the needle. Think:
📣 Bold comms & campaigns — like the viral Jackie Shroff x Ugaoo cultural moment — that put gardening on India’s pop-culture map (28M+ views and counting), generated massive earned media buzz (150+ mentions), and drove record engagement over a two-week period
📈 Organic growth that isn’t just SEO fluff
📱 Social that doesn’t look or sound like a bot
🌱 IRL moments, PR buzz, and influencer moves that feel human, not transactional

Fractional CMO

Good People Studio.

At GOOD PEOPLE, I play fractional CMO-meets-CCO for ambitious consumer brands that want more than just “content” — they want strategy with soul, storytelling with bite, and marketing that actually moves people.

I help founders build brands that feel human, intentional, and hard to ignore. Think:
💡 Content-led brand strategy that doesn’t drown in jargon
📣 CEO-led marketing that sounds like you, not LinkedIn GPT

I help early-stage brands stop chasing hype and start building something unforgettable.

Founder

Amazon

At Amazon, I ran editorial and content strategy for About Amazon across APAC — aka the official newsroom that publishes over 1,000 stories a year and somehow still makes people care about corporate updates.

I led storytelling across India, Japan, Australia, and Singapore — from breaking news and product launches to employee spotlights, policy explainers, and “hey, we’re not evil” community narratives.

Also:
⚡ Hired and mentored a small but mighty regional team
⚡ Brought sanity to editorial ops and globalised the content playbook
⚡ Rolled out global-first innovations in both editorial and distribution
⚡ Drove a 30% lift in organic traffic and 22% YoY SEO growth — without begging Google for scraps

I also moonlighted as a content therapist for internal teams: advising on social, email, video, campaigns, and “why is no one reading this?” problems.

Head of Owned Content & Channels - APAC

At Amazon India, I refreshed the owned content and social strategy from scratch — newsroom, social channels, strategy, everything — and turned it into a reputation-driving, reach-scaling machine.

📣 Relaunched AboutAmazon.in and Amazon News India to make the brand more relevant, more human, and a lot harder to ignore.
📅 Ran the full content machine: editorial calendar, channel strategy, data deep dives, stakeholder management, and agency orchestration (with reduced chaos).
📈 Made the numbers sing:
→ 40% jump in organic site traffic
→ 47% SEO traffic growth
→ 76% increase in social reach (312M)
→ 73M video views
→ 14.95% average engagement rate (because yes, people actually cared)
→ 63M total engagements — no random fluff

Also worked closely with the global teams to co-create channel tenets and playbooks — aka the rulebook for how to not be boring at scale.

Head of Owned Content & Social - India

Impresario Handmade Restaurants

Storyteller-in-chief for some of India’s most iconic F&B brands, including SOCIAL, antiSOCIAL, Smoke House Deli, Ishaara, and more under the Impresario Handmade Restaurants umbrella.

Think brand building with edge, attitude, and actual outcomes — not just food porn and hashtags.

🧠 Led all things content and marketing comms across 57+ restaurants nationwide
🍸 Drove campaigns that made noise online and filled tables offline
📢 Owned PR, influencer, and integrated marketing from concept to chaos (and back)
📍Launched new outlets with hyperlocal buzz, not cookie-cutter templates

Also:
⚡ Introduced women’s safety initiatives and inclusive policies that weren’t just PR fluff
⚡ Advocated for more women and gender-diverse talent across teams and touchpoints
⚡ Turned brand values into action. and made sure the work actually walked the talk

My superpower?
Bringing the right people, partners, agencies, and energy together to make s**t happen — and making it look effortless while doing it.

Content Marketing & Communications Head

Hauterfly

Founded Hauterfly — a fashion, beauty, lifestyle, and pop culture platform made by and for millennial Indian women who were done being spoken down to. Think sharp, social-first, and unapologetically opinionated, long before that was cool.

📱 Built a video-first content machine with a 5M+ monthly reach across platforms
🎥 Ranked among India’s top 5 Facebook video publishers (Style/How-To, Vidooly 2018)
🧠 Hired and led a lean, all-killer-no-filler team across content, video, tech, and sales
💅🏽 Created a tone of voice that felt like your smarter, funnier best friend, and a visual aesthetic that brands wanted to be part of

In 2018, sold Hauterfly to Fork Media — a leading digital content + adtech company. Had the time of my life but also burned out hard.

CEO & Editor-in-Chief

Fork Media - AskMen India, IGN India, Mashable India

🎮📱 Launched and led the India editions of AskMen, IGN, and Mashable — three of the world’s biggest names in men’s lifestyle, gaming, tech, and pop culture.

Brought the global brands to an Indian audience without diluting the voice or dumbing it down.

🧩 Hired and led lean, impact-driven editorial teams across all three verticals
📈 Owned India strategy, content, and brand growth from scratch
🌏 Managed the relationship with Ziff Davis’ global teams
💡 Identified local content + revenue opportunities that were culturally relevant, not copy-paste

Editorial Director

Stylista.com

👗 Early days of fashion x tech, but make it chic.

At Stylista, I helped build India’s first collaborative fashion platform — dropping limited-edition capsule collections with iconic designers like Wendell Rodricks, Masaba Gupta, Shivan & Narresh, and more… all at high street prices.

Before “creator collabs” became a buzzword, we were doing it — with sharp storytelling, tight drops, and real cultural heat.

🧠 Led content strategy that actually drove conversions — not just “engagement”
🛍️ Made the scroll-to-cart journey seamless, with content that inspired and sold
💬 Shaped brand comms to cut through the noise and win meaningful media mindshare

It was fashion meets storytelling meets retail innovation — and we made it look good while doing it.

Director - Editorial, Content & Communications

ZKPR

Marketing | Communications | Brand Alliances

https://www.facebook.com/ZKPRIndia

Consultancy

The Times Of India

Had a wild ride at Bombay Times, the country’s most-read entertainment and lifestyle supplement — where I shaped the fashion and features pages with a mix of cultural curiosity, trend radar, and tabloid flair.

👗 Covered everything from beauty, art, and music to wellness and “who’s-wearing-what” on Page 3
🧠 Conceptualised, commissioned, and edited stories that blended pop culture heat with lifestyle depth
🖊️ Balanced newsroom chaos with real creative chops and learned how to make anything (and anyone) sound just a little more fabulous on deadline

Fashion & Culture Editor

HELLO! Magazine

At HELLO!, India’s leading luxury and lifestyle magazine, I lived in the land of exclusives, emeralds, and editorial deadlines.

🖊️ Crafted cover stories and in-depth profiles of A-list personalities across fashion, film, business, art, sports, and high society
🎤 Interviewed everyone from movie stars and CEOs to royalty and rule-breakers — and made sure the copy sparkled as much as the diamonds did
💡 Conceptualised features that balanced access and aspiration, turning everyday reporting into glossy, unforgettable storytelling

Assistant Editor

🧠 Fractional CCO consultant + personal branding expert. ⚡ Former startup founder, now run Good People Studio. 🤘 Most excited when great stories meets great strategy.

Passionately chasing my curiosities. 

I talk about modern marketing the way most marketers won’t: with a little bite, zero jargon, and (sliiiightly) unhinged honesty.

Over the years, I’ve built and shaped brands across media, tech, and consumer — from legacy names to emerging cult favourites. Today, I consult with ambitious founders to help them unlock sharp positioning, strategic clarity, and campaigns that actually make people care.

On here, you’ll find me writing about:
- Marketing that tries too hard
- The beauty industry’s beige crisis
- Navigating taste in the age of AI
- And the occasional slap-you-awake insight wrapped in pop culture, sarcasm, and solid strategy

Because marketing has gotten way too serious. And your CAC isn't the only thing that needs cutting.

I’m going to get cancelled for saying this, but…
the beauty industry has turned into a science cosplay convention.

Every serum is “clinically proven.”
Every moisturizer has a “patented complex™.”
Every sunscreen is “dermatologist-formulated with quantum hydration technology.”

Sounds fancy, right? Except half of it is science-washing — dressing up average products in lab coats they don’t deserve.

Here’s the truth:
🥼A “clinical study” could just mean 20 people said “yeah, my skin feels softer.” That is subjective data from a perception study, not clinical fact. 
🥼 A patent doesn’t prove efficacy — it just means someone filed paperwork.
🥼 And dermatologist-tested? That can literally mean one dermatologist tried it once and signed off on it.

The language of science is being used as a marketing aesthetic. A vibe. A costume. And consumers are footing the bill.

Don’t get me wrong. I love real science. Gold-standard actives. Peer-reviewed clinicals. Bio-instrumental analysis. That’s how skincare should be built.

But the more brands fill product copy with empty jargon, the harder it gets to separate proof from performance theatre.

At some point, “science-backed skincare” is going to be the new “clean beauty” — so overused, it’ll mean nothing.

So sincerely, your serum doesn’t need a fake lab coat. 👩🏻‍🔬
It needs clinically-vetted results. 🔬

#beauty #skincare #marketing

Zahra Khan

💁🏻‍♀️ Founder - GOOD PEOPLE. 🧠 Fractional CCO. ⚡️ Ex Amazon. ✍️ Writer of sassy hot takes on consumer marketing, communications, and the business of beauty.

Some people measure career milestones in promotions.
Some in IPOs.

Me? I measure mine in how many times I got to say “Bhidu” in a brand meeting! ✌😎 

Thrilled (and mildly starstruck) to announce that Jackie Shroff is now the face of Ugaoo 🌱 — a project we cooked up over a year with a great band of collaborators at Thought Over Design and Cathect Studios.

Because when your brand is rooted in a love for plants, the planet, and a little bit of swagger…you don’t just get a celebrity.

You get THE man who:
🌿 Has a plant in every frame of his life
🌿 Can make watering look like a fashion statement
🌿 Is, frankly, cooler than most of us on a good day

From pitch to final cut, this has been one of my favourite marketing moments to come to life at Ugaoo! 

Kudos to Siddhant Bhalinge 🪴 for making this happen and pushing everyone to go above and beyond on this project. 

As everyone’s favourite Bhidu says, “Ugaoo Bhidu, Ugaoo!” 🌱✨

#ugaoo #jackieshroff #ugaoobhiduugaoo #marketing #brandmarketing #strategy

Saurabh Sameer Shreevar Chhotaria Chinmaya Khole Annushka Hardikar Anushka Sani Ganesh More Elisha Saigal El Sol Strategic Consultants

What if I told you that brand loyalty isn’t dead in India?
If anything, we’ve entered peak irrational loyalty.

Not the kind our parents’ generation had for their cars or their gold.
I mean loyalty so granular it borders on unhinged.

Case in point:
💪 My protein shelf is basically sponsored by The Whole Truth Foods. Someone suggested MuscleBlaze and I looked at them like they just swore at me.
🧴 My everyday moisturiser? d'you. Period. 
☕️ Coffee = ARAKU Coffee. Anything else tastes like punishment.
🐈 My 4 cats don’t own anything. They have Heads Up For Tails possessions.
🧳 I have 4 Mokobara suitcases. Did I need them all? No. Did the set need to be completed? Absolutely yes.
🫧 The day I bought a random floor cleaner instead of PureCult, my house help staged an aggressive intervention.

This is not “elusive” loyalty. This is borderline cult behaviour.
And it’s fascinating to watch.

So what’s changed?
1️⃣ We can now afford to be picky.
2️⃣ D2C brands turned commodities into tribes.
3️⃣ Q-commerce killed the “whatever’s available” excuse.
4️⃣ Status signaling isn’t just for handbags. It’s for your dishwashing liquid too.

So no, loyalty hasn’t disappeared. It’s mutated.
From passive habit → to active identity.

Which brand has YOU in a CHOKEHOLD right now? 
I'm keen to know/discover more brands and their raving fans!

#brandstrategy #marketing #D2C

India is being called the “last bastion of growth” for global beauty, according to a recent story in the Economic Times (link in comments.)

Shiseido, L'Oréal, Estée Lauder, KOSÉ Corporation — all the global giants want in.

But here’s the part no one’s talking about: this is India’s biggest chance to build its own luxury beauty giants.

If homegrown brands:
✨ Get serious about high-quality, clinically backed formulations
✨ Show real efficacy, not just Ayurveda-lite storytelling
✨ Price accessibly compared to $100 serums and creams from luxe brands
✨ And invest in world-class branding + marketing

…then the runway is wide open to disrupt global prestige.

Right now, luxury beauty is just 4% of India’s $21B market (vs 25–48% in the US/China). And domestic brands barely make a dent. That’s not a death sentence — that’s a greenfield opportunity.

I believe Indian founders can redefine what “luxury skincare” means here.
Not just import it. Actually build it. For us. From here.

It’s exactly what I’m working on with GOOD PEOPLE — a high-performance luxury skincare brand born in India with global-standard clinical claims.

And I’m looking for:
💸 Angel investors who believe in this opportunity
🤝 Partners who want to build the next wave of Indian prestige beauty

The global giants are here. 
But this time, we don’t just have to buy into the dream. We can build it.

👉 If you know any believers, investors, or founders in your network I should be connecting with, please introduce me via comments or DMs.

#beauty #skincare #luxury #india

Louis Vuitton just dropped a $160 lipstick.
And we’ve officially crossed that fine line from “luxury” into “lunacy.”

At what point does ‘price = prestige’ stop working and just start sounding like we’re being pranked?

Because let’s be real:
💄 This isn’t just a lipstick. It’s “a bullet of status.”
💄 You’re not buying pigment. You’re buying a portable LV logo for your face.
💄 It’s less about moisturizing your lips and more about massaging your ego.

Luxury has always played the game of perceived scarcity and irrational desire. But $160 for a stick of what’s essentially wax and dye wrapped in gold packaging? That’s not selling aspiration, that’s selling audacity.

And yet, it will sell.
Because someone, somewhere, wants to pull it out of their Birkin at dinner and watch heads turn.

Maybe that’s the real genius of luxury: making something so unnecessary, so bonkers, so absolutely insane that it becomes irresistible.

Would I buy it? No. 
Would I write 700 words about it on LinkedIn? Abso-fucking-lutely.

#beauty #luxury #marketing #louisvuitton

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Soaring percentages in your skincare serums are not "innovation”.

Yet here we are, witnessing a worrying surge:
- Vitamin C jumping from 10% to 20%.
- Niacinamide doubling to 10%.
- Retinol soaring to 2%+, despite 1% long considered the max for daily use.

Higher concentrations ≠ better results. 

In fact, they often mean more irritation, barrier damage, “retinol burn,” and regulatory pushback. It’s like taking a 2,000 mg ibuprofen pill—bold, but reckless.

Clinical studies show Vitamin C concentrations above 20% don’t increase efficacy, but may increase irritation. The sweet spot? Around 10% in stable, well-formulated products.    

Regulators agree.
The EU isn’t banning retinol, but restricting it to 0.3% in face/hand products and 0.05% in body products over safety concerns about cumulative vitamin A exposure. Kojic acid faces its own limit: just 1% max in face and hand products. 

So why the “concentration arms race”?
Because percentages sell. 

Consumers—fueled by social media—want fast, visible results. Brands with cheap, recognized actives like Vitamin C and Niacinamide lean on bold numbers as pseudo-innovation.

But true innovation isn’t shouting the loudest. It’s working smarter—not harder.

Enter biotech.

Novel biotech-derived molecules deliver clinical-level results at micro-doses (0.5% or less), reducing irritation while increasing efficacy. 

This mirrors pharma’s precision: validated dosing, safety, and targeted performance. It’s the future of skincare safety and effectiveness.

IMHO, bold percentages signal desperation, not innovation.
And regulatory bodies globally are pulling the reins for a reason.

Low-dose biotech solutions offer the real edge—effective, safe, and genuinely innovative.

And so the best formulation isn’t the one with the biggest percentage. It’s the one that delivers—safely and smartly—backed by science, not hype. 

#beauty #skincare #marketing

Sam Altman said something on Nikhil Kamath’s latest podcast episode that’s been stuck in my head:

“Being a real person in a world of unlimited AI content will increase in value.”

And he’s right.

AI can now write your captions, design your ad, generate your headshot, and fake your “visionary” podcast voice. Which means 90% of the internet is about to look, sound, and feel exactly the same.

In that landscape, real becomes the moat. 

Not real like “authenticity” in the corporate brand values deck 😏.

Real like:
💁🏻‍♀️ Owning your unpopular opinions in public.
💁🏻‍♀️ Showing the messy middle, not just the glossy campaign.
💁🏻‍♀️ Writing like a human with a pulse, and not a bot with a prompt.

AI will make it cheap and easy to churn out perfect, pattern-matched, “engaging” content. And that’s exactly why it’ll all blur into a giant wall of slop.

The human stuff — with taste, with judgement, with edges — will stand out more, not less.

If you’re building a brand right now, this means:
🙅🏻‍♀️ Stop sanding off the sharp edges in your voice.
🙋🏻‍♀️ Put your actual face, hand, and POV into the work.
🙋🏻‍♀️ Let people see who’s steering the ship — and why they should care.

Because in the AI age, the scarcest thing isn’t content. It’s proof you exist.

#ai #marketing

“Follow your passion.”
Cute. Instagrammable. Mostly useless advice.

Passion is slippery. It burns hot, then fizzles. It feels good on a podcast quote card but doesn’t show up for you on a random Tuesday morning when you’re tired and uninspired.

A creative life isn’t built on passion. It’s built on curiosity.

Curiosity doesn’t care if you’re “feeling it.”
Curiosity is habitual. It’s renewable. It’s small.

It’s less about lightning bolts of “purpose” and more about micro-questions that keep you moving:
💭 Why does this work in one context but not another?
💭 What happens if I try this one notch louder / weirder / slower?
💭 What am I not seeing yet?

Curiosity compounds. One experiment leads to another, one insight sparks a new path, one failure opens a door you didn’t even know was there.

Passion demands certainty.
Curiosity thrives in not knowing.

And if you look at most people doing interesting work, they didn’t “follow their passion” straight out of a TED Talk. They chased their curiosities—sometimes down rabbit holes, sometimes into dead ends—but always into something new.

So maybe we should stop telling people to “find their passion.”
Start telling them to chase their curiosities.

It’s less glamorous. But it’s how you end up building a life full of ideas, experiments, and yes—eventually—the kind of work that feels passionate.

#modernmarketing #creativity

Stop asking your brand managers to be Instagram oracles.

I was talking to the founder of a well-funded startup a few weeks ago, and what they said hasn’t left my brain yet. 

They said virality in content had been their biggest TOF growth driver for the past two years.

But now?
Old team members have left, new ones have joined, and everyone’s scrambling to figure out “how to go viral” every quarter. 

Here’s the flaw in this approach and why this has been bugging me no end:
Virality is not a playbook. It’s a lucky side effect of strong brand POV, sharp distribution, and cultural timing.

What happens when you make “virality” the KPI?
👉 You hire smart people but set them up to fail
👉 You burn cycles chasing trends instead of building a brand
👉 You get addicted to spikes while your baseline stays flat

If virality is fireworks, brand is infrastructure.

If your growth depends on guessing the next viral moment, you don’t have a strategy — you have a casino habit.

The brands that last aren’t the ones that “go viral.” They’re the ones that show up, consistently, with a point of view so strong that even the posts that don’t pop still build demand.

No guesses why the founder ghosted me after. Spicy takes and no-B.S. advice are not everyone’s cup of tea. 🌶️

#marketing #brandstrategy

A lot of you have been asking me about…
Ok fine. Nobody’s asked me a damn thing.
Not even my mom.

I just like to write on LinkedIn to pretend I have something wise to say.

There’s no secret sauce. No “playbook.”

I’m just blundering through life, tripping over my own thoughts, and occasionally hitting post like the rest of you ✌️😎

So here’s to the chaos. And Friday shitposts.
And to admitting we’re all just winging it!

Comment “fake guru” and I’ll send you my Notion template for blundering through life with ✨confidence✨!

Limited time offer. Zero value. 100% vibes.

ROAS ≠ brand affinity.

Most new-age consumer brands still think marketing = running ads.

But here’s the truth: ads don’t create demand. They capture it. 🎯

By the time someone searches for “best peptide serum” or “affordable gardening kit,” the demand already exists. You’re just fighting to harvest it with a higher bid, a shinier creative, or a slightly better discount. 

That’s why most marketing budgets are overweight on capturing demand, and starved when it comes to creating it.

Here’s the rub: brand marketing is harder to measure. It won’t give you neat ROAS dashboards by tomorrow morning. But it’s what consistently builds awareness, consideration, affinity, and pull. 

The stuff performance marketing later gets to harvest. And that doesn’t live in your ad account.

It lives in:
✨ Media stories that reframe how people see the category
✨ Social + influencer content that educates, entertains, and earns trust before the purchase
✨ Consistency across every channel the customer touches, so that a casual follower turns into a customer, and then into an advocate

Content-led brand marketing isn’t “fluff.”
It’s the foundation of future demand.

If you want to grow beyond the scraps everyone else is bidding on, stop thinking like a media buyer, and start thinking like a media publisher.

#marketing #brandstrategy #contentmarketing

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