About me

R V Rajan, Chairman, Anugrah Madison Advertising Pvt. Ltd.

R V Rajan is a B.Com. (Hons.) from Bombay University with a PG Diploma in Advertising and PR from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay.

After an event-packed career start in Bombay (Clarion McCann) in 1964 and later with the multinational Kenyon Eckhart. Rajan became the CEO of a national ad agency, Advertising Consults India Ltd or ACIL, a sister company of Clarion at 31.

Moving to Chennai in 1974 to rejoin Grant Kenyon Eckhart, Rajan founded his own agency, Anugrah Marketing in 1986. He gradually developed a reputation for rural communication, on the basis of his contributions to several agriculture-based clients such as Shaw Wallace, EID Parry, BASF and the MRF Farm Tyre Division. He was founder-president for four years of the Rural Marketing Association of India, set up in 2005.

His flair for institution-building, problem-shooting and documentation was tapped by voluntary organizations such as Round Table India and Rotary International as well as by professional bodies such as the Singapore-based AMIC (Asian Media and Research Centre), PRSI ( Public Relations Society of India), AAAI ( Advertising Agencies Association of India), RMAI (Rural Marketing Association of India) and Ad Club, Madras. While heading the Ad Club (1993-95) he started the first ever professional post-graduate diploma course in advertising by any Ad Club in the country, which has been running successfully for 15 years.

Convert every challenge into an opportunity, is Rajan’s driving principle. It has led to success on many fronts and generous recognition: the Round Table India’s Distinguished Service Award (1984); the Outstanding Service Award from WAN-IFRA, a newspaper publishing industry body (2009) and a Lifetime Achievement Award from RMAI (2009).

His experience and ideas now translate into lectures at management institutes, speeches at workshops and conferences, and consultancy help to varied organizations. He has started writing free wheeling articles on a variety of subjects which are uploaded on his blog.


He has recently published his autobiography titled ‘Courage my Companion’ a candid fact-packed fast-moving description of his personal, professional and extra-curricular life. It makes for compelling and rewarding reading.

Rajan is married to Prabha, an active member of Innerwheel Club of Madras South and a budding short story writer in Tamil. They have 3 children and four grand children.