Veni, Vidi, VML feat. Babita Baruah (CEO, VML India)

What happens to advertising when AI agents shop for us, Q-commerce becomes a media channel, and a team of five can do the work of twenty? In this episode, Babita Baruah, CEO of VML India, talks about her 30 year journey in WPP, breaks down how BX, CX and commerce come together to build human-centric, connected brands in a Bharat-first, AI-fuelled market. We talk global brand guidelines vs local realities, the future of the big TV spot, talent in an AI world, value-based pricing and why creativity still has to stay stubbornly human. 📺 What happens when one of India's most enduring advertising leaders sits down to talk about everything the industry is too polite to say out loud? You get this episode. 📺 Going deep on the fault lines defining the industry right now: why friction in the purchase journey might be a feature, not a bug; and how AI is reshaping the agency P&L in ways most leaders won't say on record. 📺 They talk Q-commerce and the 6-inch shelf where decisions happen in under 10 seconds. They talk about what a creative director actually does when execution is a commodity. They debate whether the pure-play agency model can still deliver 10%+ growth year-on-year. And they go into the value-based pricing question that every agency CEO is quietly terrified of, how do you charge more for faster, AI-augmented output to procurement departments trained to count manhours? 📺 Babita also shares her view on what skill a 2026/27 graduate needs that simply didn't exist two years ago, where she'd place her bet on the Indian startup ecosystem by 2030, and, if she were building an agency from scratch today, whether it would look anything like the network model we have now. The Indian AdGeek streams on all major podcast apps. Vishal on X