Roda Mehta felicitated with AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award

The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) felicitated Roda Mehta with the AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award at a special event organised in Mumbai on July 14. Ashish Bhasin, Chairman of the AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award Committee – Selection, read out the major milestones that Roda surpassed in her professional career and some of her outstanding achievements as an industry leader.

Roda Mehta had a long and illustrious career in the media and advertising industry, pioneering some of the most outstanding initiatives in the industry. She started her career with Hindustan Thompson Associates in 1971 and became the first MBA and first woman in the media function of an advertising agency in India. She moved to Ogilvy Benson & Mather in 1975, and rose from Media Group Head to Media Controller for Bombay Office in 1976 to representing Media for the first time on the Managing Committee of Bombay Office in 1978. She was sent to London for three months to introduce Account Planning and Research in the Indian operation in 1980 and rose to the Board as Director – Media & Research in 1982.
Roda became Director - International Client Service in 1994, and Managing Consultant - the Media Network in 1996. Along the way, she pioneered outdoor planning and buying and set up a Rural Media network to service client requirements.

Invited on several committees and associations by the industry, including the Expert Committee on TV Marketing for Doordarshan and AIR, she was Founder Member of the Market Research Society of India (MRSI) and Founder Member and Chairperson - Technical Committee of the Media Research Users Council (MRUC). She chaired MRUC from 1994-96. 

Roda was also on the Board of several other committees including Advisory Board - Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (Govt of India), AAAI’s Media Disputes Committee, Economic Times Advisory Panel, etc. She has served as faculty on training programs run by Ogilvy & Mather India and Asia Pacific.

Roda has bagged several prestigious awards including the David Ogilvy Award for Asia Pacific and Agency of the Year Award (Public Service) 1992 for the National Literacy Mission campaign.

Currently, she is associated with several non-profit organisations as a Trustee of the Lila Poonawalla Foundation, which provides scholarships and mentoring to economically challenged girls from Maharashtra for post-graduate, graduate/diploma and secondary school education; Board Member and Treasurer of Nagrik Chetna Manch, a citizen’s watchdog organization on public expenditure.