Mridul.Mumbai / Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala · In marketing since 2010
I grow digital platforms, and research the trust they run on.
Product marketing leader with 16+ years across media, advertising, and digital platforms. I lead ads.timesofindia.com for the Times of India Group, and I am a doctoral scholar at IIM Sambalpur researching how brands hold on to trust when anyone can fake them.
Mridul Vijay · Thiruvananthapuram, India
About
Sixteen years of turning products into revenue.
Currently
I am Mridul Vijay, based in Mumbai / Thiruvananthapuram. My career has followed two lines that keep meeting: building brands and building the products that sell them. I started in advertising with Crayons and Stark on Kerala Tourism, Incredible India, TATA Motors, Air India, and Kochi Metro, moved into analytics at Omnicom Media Group’s Annalect, and then into product marketing at the Times of India Group.
Today, I am the product owner for ads.timesofindia.com, the self-serve ad-booking platform for The Times of India, Economic Times, Maharashtra Times, and Nav Bharat Times. It carries about ₹12 Cr in online classified revenue. Platform revenue is up 45%, and ad orders are up 25% year on year, helped by a WhatsApp support AI bot, AI-suggested ad copy, and a regional language compiler that lets advertisers book in several Indian languages.
The research grew out of the same work. Once a brand can be convincingly faked, most of what marketing assumes about trust needs checking. That is what my doctorate at IIM Sambalpur looks at.
- 16+
- Years in marketing and media
- ₹12 Cr
- Platform revenue owned
- 45%
- Revenue growth delivered
- 40+
- Person analytics team led
What I do
Where I am useful.
Product marketing and go to market
Positioning, launch plans, adoption, and the story that makes a product easy to buy.
Platform growth and monetisation
Self serve funnels, conversion, retention, and pricing for advertising and marketplace products.
Brand and campaign strategy
Integrated campaigns across television, print, digital, and on ground, with long experience in tourism, transport, and public sector brands.
AI, deepfakes, and brand trust
Readiness reviews and response plans for brands exposed to synthetic media. This is where the research and the day job overlap.
Current research
Brand Resilience Against AI-Generated Deepfakes & Synthetic Misinformation
I am a doctoral scholar in management at IIM Sambalpur, specializing in marketing. The work, provisionally titled The Synthetic Crisis, asks how brands can build resistance to AI-generated deepfakes and synthetic misinformation before an attack lands, rather than scrambling after it. It draws on Keller’s customer-based brand equity model, situational crisis communication theory, and inoculation theory.
A brand’s defence has to exist before the fake does.
Selected work
Four pieces of work worth reading about.
ads.timesofindia.com, Times of India Group
Head of product for the group's self-serve ad booking platform. I put AI into three places where advertisers were dropping out: Times AI Text Ad Assist, which writes ad copy inside the booking flow, a live chatbot on the page, and a WhatsApp bot for queries and booking support.
Result: 45% revenue growth, 25% year on year growth in ad orders, ₹12 Cr platform revenue. Best Performance Marketing Campaign for BCCL, E4M Marketing Awards 2026.
Kerala Tourism
Years of campaign and digital work across The Great Backwaters, Visit Kerala, and Ayurveda led branding, plus the Go Kerala app, the Maya WhatsApp bot, award-winning music films, and VR activations at major airports.
Result: multiple PATA Gold and Golden City Gate awards, and campaigns behind Kerala's highest-ever domestic arrivals.
Incredible India, Ministry of Tourism
Built the Incredible India social presence from scratch — including the second most-followed tourism Facebook page in the world — then three years of national print and campaign creative on the Ministry's creative panel.
Result: among the largest social followings of any tourism board globally, a scale that has held since.
Kochi Metro Rail
Project lead for the launch of the website, mobile apps, CRM integration, live chat, and digital customer service for a city's first metro.
Result: a working digital service layer in place from day one of public operations.
Omnicom Media Group, Annalect, UK market
Led a 40 plus person insights, analytics, and programmatic team serving UK clients, working alongside PHD, OMD, and MGOMD on campaign measurement and audience segmentation.
Result: one reporting and measurement standard across four partner agencies.
Writing
Notes on marketing, platforms, and brand trust.
I write about what I am working on and what I am reading: how advertising platforms actually grow, what sixteen years of tourism campaigns taught me, and what synthetic media is doing to brands. Some of it starts here and goes to LinkedIn. Some of it starts as research.
What a deepfake actually does to brand equity, and what it does not
Coming soonWhy self serve advertising platforms stall on the second order
Coming soonSixteen years of Kerala Tourism campaigns, and what still works
Coming soonSpeaking
Talks and guest sessions.
I speak on product marketing for advertising platforms, on AI in marketing workflows, and on brand trust in the age of synthetic media. Mostly for marketing teams, business schools, and industry sessions.
Let’s talk.
Hiring for a senior marketing role, looking for consulting help, planning a session, or working on similar research. Any of those, my inbox is open.