Siddharth Rao, co-founder and former CEO of WebChutney, passed away on Friday evening. An official statement released by Punt Partners stated, “He suffered a fatal cardiac arrest on the 21st of April at his home in Karjat.” Rao is survived by his parents and his wife.
Dentsu WebChutney also posted on LinkedIn about Rao’s dismissal and wrote, “Just like all of you, we’re still coming to terms with the sudden and unfortunate demise of Sidharth Rao. All of us who’ve been at Webchutney, knew him not just as our founder or our super boss. For us, he was exactly how he’d like to call himself – ‘Daddy @ Webchutney.’ He was the guy who always had the loudest cheer at award functions. The guy who ensured that we worked hard and partied even harder. The guy who would always be more excited than us on our ideas. The guy who, god knows how and why, always had more faith in us than we had in ourselves. The guy who never shied away from casually instilling confidence by saying, “Tu karlega/karlegi.” The guy we all never knew would leave us so damn early. RIP Sid. The OG fauji.”
Almost 23 years ago, in 1999, Siddharth founded India’s first and top digital agency WebChutney. Dentsu later acquired the agency in 2013, and for over twenty years, Rao served as CEO of WebChutney. In July 2021, Rao was chosen to serve as the global CEO of Dentsu McGarrybowen.
Rao’s agency won awards for ‘The Unfiltered History Tour’ for Vice Media at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2022.
However, in 2022, he stepped down as the group CEO of the Japanese media network and started his venture, Punt Partners, with serial entrepreneur Madhu Sudhan in the marketing tech space.
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