A BIGGER SANDBOX FOR CHINMAY KELKAR

Mars Snacking Asia has appointed Chinmay Kelkar as director, media and integrated ecosystems, following its merger with Kellanova. His remit now spans chocolate, gums, mints, fruity confectionery, pet care, cereals and salty snacks, marking his first client-side leadership role after a distinguished agency career across Asia’s biggest media accounts.

Corporate mergers rarely hand anyone a bigger sandbox this fast. For Chinmay Kelkar, the appointment as director, media and integrated ecosystems at Mars Snacking Asia arrives courtesy of Mars’s tie-up with Kellanova, effectively doubling the categories under his watch. Where he once steered media strategy across chocolate, gums, mints, fruity confectionery and pet care for North Asia, he now inherits cereals and salty snacks too. The expansion transforms what was a regional media brief into something closer to a full-blown FMCG ecosystem play, positioning Kelkar at the heart of one of Asia’s most diverse consumer portfolios.  

Kelkar’s journey to this point has been shaped almost entirely by agency-side roles, making his Mars posting a notable pivot into client leadership. He joined the company in February 2026 straight from WPP Media, where he spent seven months as senior vice-president, regional clients, in Singapore. Before that came four and a half years at EssenceMediacom, first as regional business lead from September 2021 and then, from January 2023, as head of transformation.  

The Mediabrands chapter, spanning February to September 2021 as senior regional business director and October 2019 to September 2021 as regional business director, saw him run the ExxonMobil account across 11 markets in Asia Pacific and Oceania, leading account management, planning, buying and ad-ops teams across the region. Yet it is his seven-year run at MediaCom, much of it in China, that reads like the meat of the résumé. As planning director on Team P&G China from July 2016, Kelkar headed media strategy and ecommerce store management for the grooming category across Shanghai and Guangzhou. His work delivered 66 per cent higher media-led sales for Gillette on a budget cut of 19 per cent, while driving Braun and Gillette ecommerce sales to 238 per cent and 184 per cent of prior-year levels respectively.  

Kelkar also built China’s first branded VR ecommerce experience for Gillette and set up P&G China’s first dedicated live media command centre, innovations that underscored his reputation as a strategist unafraid to push boundaries. Now, with Mars’s expanded remit, he faces the challenge of weaving together categories that span indulgence, nutrition and everyday snacking into a coherent media ecosystem. For a marketer making his first leap from agency to client side, it is a sandbox both daunting and exhilarating.