RAJESH DAHIYA

Formally trained in graphic design & interaction design, Rajesh is the founding director of Codesign—brand identity & communication design practice ( www.codesign.in ) With over 15 years of professional experience Dahiya balances the strategic role of design in businesses and craftsmanship in design execution through his creative leadership at Codesign. He founded Codesign as an independent practice to create a vibrant environment for ideas, people and culture, that collectively creates original design that is rooted in and responsive to the new India.

Rajesh has represented Indian design & Codesign at numerous national and international platforms including, What Design Can Do (Amsterdam), London Design Festival, Sri Lanka Design Festival, Kyoorius Design Yatra and TEDx, and is considered a significant voice in design as a practice and profession in India over the last decade. He was co-founder of UnBox, India’s first inter-disciplinary design festival, and more recently also co-founded Rising—an emerging platform exploring visual communication design for change in India.

Under his stewardship, Codesign and its work have been featured and awarded on Indian and international platforms including D&AD, Eye Magazine, Domus, Creative Review and CII. In 2006, Rajesh was featured in CNBC TV18’s Young Turk—One of India’s most acclaimed shows on entrepreneurship and the spirit of enterprise.

Codesign has designed brand identity program for Royal Enfield, Tata Motors, Wildcraft amongst many other clients.

Rajesh learns by teaching, and maintains an obsessive love for finer details.

SONAL DABRAL

Deeply passionate about advertising, blackjack and single malts, SonalDabral was born in India and studied Visual Communication at India’s leading design school – the National Institute of Design.

Over a 25 year career, Sonal has led agencies to creative glory in 3 different markets across Asia.

At Ogilvy Mumbai in the 90's, in partnership with Piyush Pandey, he drove the agency from creative anonymity to India’s No.1 agency. He did the same with Ogilvy Kuala Lumpur leading the agency to become the most awarded in Malaysia and one of the region's hottest within just three years. In the process winning Malaysia’s first-ever Gold at an international award show- a One Show Gold. Ogilvy Singapore was next, where he led his team to become No.1 in the Creative Ranking in Asia, and the third most awarded office in the world at Cannes Lions 2007 – a first for an Asian agency.

In 1999 the Times Of India, a leading Indian newspaper had named Sonal as one of the 50 young Indians who will lead India into the next century. Perhaps to keep that promise Sonal returned to India as the Regional CCO and Chairman of Bates. After this followed a stint with DDB Mudra.

A popular speaker, Sonal has spoken at major festivals and events like Spikes Asia, Dubai Lynx, Cristal Advertising Festival, Turkey, LIA, TEDx and PechaKucha nights besides numerous engagements across Asia. He once successfully woke up a sleepy audience in Taiwan by singing an impromptu Bollywood song during a seminar. Since then he has employed this trick to significant effect in many presentations.

International Advertising Association (India chapter) recently picked Sonal as the Creative Leader of the Year for the year 2017.

Having spent a significant part of his career with the Ogilvy network, September 2017 saw a homecoming for Sonal as he took over the mantle of Vice Chairman and Group Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy India.

A jack of all trades, in an earlier avatar Sonal has been a favourite TV host on prime time television and a Bollywood scriptwriter. This November, Sonal will also debut as a playwright when a play written by him is staged in Singapore.

His post advertising plans include being a filmmaker on weekdays and a pro Blackjack player on weekends. All along sipping his favourite single malts.

Baljeet Singh Juneja

Baljeet Juneja is a Creative Evangelist at Adobe. His responsibility at Adobe includes building enterprise solutions for customers and developing strong ecosystem around Adobe technology stack for Creative Cloud and Document Cloud across India. He comes with over 10 years of in-depth experience on various digital technologies. Baljeet has done Masters in Computer Applications and likes to spend his spare time with family, technology gadgets and listening to music.