Google India Head Rajan Anandan Joins ASCI Board

A self-regulatory voluntary organization of the advertising industry Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has appointed Google India's country head Rajan Anandan as a member of its board of directors.

This comes in the wake of ASCI's plans to step up its efforts to promote fair advertising practises in the online domain.  With a large percentage of India's population being very young, digital adoption is expected to increase going forward as more of the population comes of age and there will be a proportionate increase in online revenue spends

"The Internet is increasingly becoming a significant touch-point for brands to connect with consumers. Thus, it becomes essential that online advertising is aligned to the primary objects of ASCI. Rajan's appointment on ASCI's Board will help ASCI generate the necessary consciousness towards fair advertising practises in the Online domain," said I Venkat, chairman, ASCI.

Anandan will assist ASCI and Google to jointly create awareness about fair advertising practices across a large bandwidth of consumer touch-points on the Internet. Anandan who is also an active angel investor has previously worked in companies such as Microsoft, Dell and McKinsey & Company.

It is estimated that the Indian online advertising revenue will touch Rs 1,500 crore by the end of 2011. With the kind of growths seen in this space, online advertising would possibly be worth around $1 billion by the end of 2014, according to ASCI.