In today’s times when the glory days of creativity seem to be in the past; it is the intention of creative veteran Santosh Padhi aka Paddy and his four other co-founders to get to big, brave and fearless creative work, irrespective of the medium/platform which has given birth to a new independent advertising agency- Into Creative.
The launch of the agency will officially take place in Mumbai on March 30, 2025, the day of Gudi Padwa/ Ugadi festival, which is celebrated as a new beginning in most parts of India, and is also the day when Lord Brahma had created the universe.
With six founding members having eclectic skills and personalities, Into Creative will help brands find that Big Directional Idea — not a line that lives in communication, but a big bang of an idea that can penetrate deep into the brand universe which can only be delivered by a team that’s game to go deep into things that count for a brand.
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That said, Paddy, who is often reckoned as one of India’s most renowned creative professionals’, is not new to founding an agency as he had co-founded Taproot back in 2009 which was sold to the Dentsu group. Post that, he had joined Wieden+Kennedy India as Chief Creative Officer in early 2022 and went on to part ways from W+K India along with W+K India’s President Ayesha Ghosh in October 2024 in the pursuit of searching for his ‘new love’.
Taproot, the mighty creative force co-founded by Agnello Dias aka and Paddy was partially (51%) acquired by Dentsu in 2012, followed by a 100% stake buyout in 2019.
That said, Into Creative is his brain child to fill the current vacuum in the industry and he holds the majority stake in the company, while the others are also stakeholders.
At Into Creative, Paddy will be serving the role of Founder, CCO and Chairman while Ghosh will be the CEO and Co-founder and will be involved with all aspects of the agency along with four other Co-founders- Yogesh Rijhwani who will lead creative, Tania Dey– Strategy and Digital, Namrata Gosavi– design and digital, and Gargi Vegiraju– business lead.
The agency will be open to adding other heads to champion further specialist verticals as and when needed, with stakes assigned to them as well.
That said, the team behind Into Creative have been in talks to come to closure with a few clients and hence will be announcing the wins and deals post its official launch.
At Into Creative, the Big Directional Idea will be the guiding light for all possible brand requirements; from advertising campaigns to media properties to social content strategy to app design to tech-led innovations to in-game content to PR and so on and on. These kinds of ideas only come to life through deep collaboration. The team will work with a diverse range of thinkers, makers, creators, coders and partners who bring fresh perspectives and help push ideas further.
The team with their deliberately conflicting perspectives and complementary strengths, have a shared history of debating approaches, strategies and ideas. They have worked on some of the biggest brands and have powerful work to their credit, such as for Jio 5G, Hero Vida EV, Hero Cycles, Jindal Steel, Jockey, Zoya to name a few.
Moreover, the six co-founders of Into Creative worked together at Wieden+Kennedy India, which closed its advertising service in India in December 2024. Previously, Rijhwani, Vegiraju, Paddy and Ghosh also worked together at Taproot.
Commenting on the launch of the new agency, Santosh Padhi (Paddy), Founder, Chief Creative Officer and Chairman, Into Creative, said, “I would have easily retired on an island but the calling from adland is loud and clear. This industry has given me everything and it is time for me to give back.”
“Our focus will be on doing brave, fearless, creative brand work. Indian brands and platforms have grown in number, but creativity hasn’t. Oddly enough, brands are being built on creativity. Somewhere the passion of creative agencies to push boundaries has been lost. In a world where anything is now creatively possible, we are here to fill this vacuum,” he said.
To this, Ayesha Ghosh, CEO, Into Creative, added, “More experiments happen when independent. And experiments often fail but every now and then give birth to a gloriously unexpected, triumphant discovery. We’re here for that. We see ourselves as multipliers. When one collaborates with high creative integrity, respecting every platform, that’s when true magnification of ideas happens.”
