IN THE PRESS
July 06, 2026
This article originally appeared in Horizont. To read Daniel's complete column and explore additional insights, visit Horizont.
Writing an article about India for my column was always only a matter of when. Who I would ask was equally clear after our last meeting and conversation in Singapore: Josy Paul - one of India's industry legends, who I am fortunate enough to count among my colleagues.
India is everywhere right now. As the world's fourth-largest economy, with GDP growth of 6.6 percent in 2025 and a projected 6.2 percent for 2026 - while Germany may be struggling with negative growth - this country is no longer an emerging economy. It has arrived.
The Numbers First
And they speak for themselves: India's total advertising spend reached around 12 billion euros in the financial year 2025 - a growth of eleven percent year-on-year. Digital advertising has overtaken television as the largest channel, holding 44 percent market share. The creator economy counts 100 million digital creators, the influencer marketing market is growing at 22 percent annually - and is expected to reach around 500 million euros by 2027.
A Decade of Becoming
Josy Paul began his career at Ogilvy&Mather and Lowe Lintas, before doing something unusual in 2000: he co-founded David - the first David agency worldwide, as a challenger brand within the Ogilvy network. The timing was no coincidence.
"India had just liberalized, and international companies were entering the country," Paul explains. "I saw an opportunity to start a challenger agency. David is a challenger - and the world will always need one." The office looked like a playschool - Paul sat on a toilet lid, bad ideas were dismissed with a flushing bell. The agency won architecture awards before it won advertising awards.
What was that time in India like? "It was a decade of becoming, not of being," says Paul. "The country was searching for identity. But it was also the first time you felt: even the smallest can influence the biggest."
India's Creative Capital
At the Cannes Lions Festival 2025, India was the leading APAC market with 32 awards. Josy Paul himself presided over the jury of the SDG Lions, the category for creativity in service of global development goals. This is no coincidence, but the result of a creative culture rooted far deeper than its awards suggest.
Where does this energy come from? Paul pauses briefly. His answer is surprisingly direct:
"We grew up navigating multiple realities simultaneously. Different languages, belief systems, income levels, traditions. When you live in it, you don't feel the complexity. But you learn early: there is never just one truth. The south is different from the north, the west different from the east. There aren't four Indias - there are many Indias."
This complexity, Paul says, is our raw material. "Our creativity comes from adaptation. We are constantly finding ways around limitations. That forces us to truly understand people. And that deep understanding of people - that is the source of our empathy. And empathy is the origin of great creativity."
The Moment That Changed Everything
In 2008, Paul co-founded BBDO India along with his CEO partner Ajai Jhala and the leadership at BBDO Asia and BBDO Worldwide. He spent the first nine months wandering from café to café, observing young people. What he sensed: a generation that no longer wanted to be spoken to, but to be included.
The defining moment came with the terrorist attack on the Taj Mahal Hotel on 26 November 2008. A year later, on the anniversary, Paul and his creative partner RajDeepak Das stood in front of the Taj with ten students - without a plan, only an instinct. Paul wanted to create “A monument of sound”. For two and a half hours they chanted Hindi verses, until the entire crowd joined in. No protest, no performance - a collective act of connection.
"That night I wrote: Create Acts, Not Ads. And after that, our work changed. Everything changed."
What began as a personal moment in front of the Taj became one of the most influential creative philosophies in the global advertising industry - cited from Cannes to New York today, long before "Brand Purpose" became an industry buzzword.
The Economy of Affection
The current industry debate, Paul says, focuses too much on attention. "Attention can be bought, it can be manipulated - through programmatic advertising, through AI. But I believe the new economy is the economy of affection."
The "Affection Economy" - that is Paul's term for an era in which brands no longer compete for clicks, but for meaning. "When people say: you speak my language. You give my life meaning - then you can communicate across any medium and you will always stand for that one thing that connected you with human beings."
The Digital Quantum Leap
Beyond creative strength, India is also one of the most remarkable tech infrastructure stories of our time - and this story is barely known in Germany. The Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, today processes almost half of all real-time payment transactions worldwide. A street vendor in Mumbai accepts payments by QR code faster than a Berlin supermarket processes a card payment.
India has skipped entire technological generations: no landlines, straight to smartphones, straight to mobile wallets. Homegrown brands like boAt, Nykaa or Zepto are not competing with global brands - they are setting the pace.
In 2025, numerous international brands entered (or re-entered) India - and what they find is not an emerging market, but one of the most demanding consumer environments in the world. This is exactly what Paul keeps having to explain to Western brands, and he does so with a phrase you won't quickly forget: "India is a continent disguised as a country. We are not singular - we are plural." Indian consumers are connected, informed and digitally sovereign - and at the same time proud of local innovations. "You have to understand this duality: globally informed, locally rooted."
The Ambition Gene
Satya Nadella at Microsoft. Sundar Pichai at Google. The list of Indian CEOs at the top of global technology companies is long - and growing. According to an international study, 76 percent of all Indian professionals aspire to lead or manage a company. Number one worldwide. For comparison: in Germany it is 41 percent.
At the same time, the Indian Institute of Technology is considered one of the most selective education systems in the world: only 1.83 percent of applicants are admitted - a rate more stringent than Ivy League universities. No legacy admissions, no parent networks. Pure merit.
Josy Paul explains this collective energy with something deeper: "The story of scarcity - of not having, the poverty of our grandparents - shaped Indians to believe that tomorrow can be significantly better. That hunger, that conviction: that is the fuel."
And the names - Nadella, Pichai, the others - play a concrete role in this system. "They make headlines. They are discussed in schools and universities. They become symbols of what is possible. It is no longer abstract. It feels achievable." Paul laughs briefly: "God is no longer abstract. God is Indian."
What's Coming - India in 2030
Where will India stand in five years - as an advertising market, as a creative force, as a technology nation? Paul hesitates. Not out of uncertainty, but out of respect for the complexity of the question. The old linear structures, Paul says, no longer apply - creators, communities, commerce and experiences merge today into a single, seamless experience.
But despite all the complexity, Paul has a clear answer to what India's most important contribution to the world in the coming years will be:
"India's greatest strength will be its human capital - and what it means to be human. Because there are so many of us, it teaches us inclusion. Compassion. Imagination. These human qualities - that is what India can offer the world."
Conclusion
India is not on its way. It is here, and how. A country with 1.4 billion people, one of the youngest populations in the world, the most dynamic digital economy in Asia and a creative culture that has been among the most powerful in the world for years. Anyone still looking at India as an emerging market hasn't been paying attention.
What Josy Paul makes clear in this conversation is more than an industry assessment: it is an attitude. A conviction that creativity comes from empathy. That advertising is most effective when it acts rather than promises. And that the economy of the future is not that of attention, but of affection.
Perhaps that is the real lesson for Western brands - not how to arrive in India. But what India can teach us about the essentials of our work.
Thank you Josy!
