METAL Comm bags Berkshire India account; Anjali Rawat joins as ACD

Berkshire India, a majority owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, has chosen METAL Communications as its brand building and marketing communications partner as the company enters India for the first time. Berkshire India is entering the insurance sales and distribution space as a corporate agent for Bajaj Allianz General Insurance.

Berkshire India will sell insurance products through its online portal berkshireinsurance.com and telemarketing channel, beginning with auto insurance. Berkshire Hathaway has a successful online and direct distribution model in the US and is looking to replicate that success in India.

Berkshire India CEO Arun Balakrishnan says: "We interacted with Advertising agencies in India and zeroed in on METAL as the team brought in the right degree of enthusiasm backed with skill sets. We feel that building a brand in the online insurance industry requires an out of the box approach and feel that METAL would be the right partner for that."

In its latest new business acquisition, METAL will partner with Berkshire India to build and grow the brand in the distribution of motor insurance space to begin with.

METAL Communications Vice President, Ambarish Ray says: "This is a great opportunity for METAL to not only work with one of the world's most admired companies but also tackle some unique challenges in the sector. Traditionally, insurance has been sold in India and not bought. With its direct model and best practices, Mr Buffett's company is all set to change the game and we are thrilled to be a part of it."

METAL will be responsible for all brand building and marketing communication and services work for Berkshire India.

Another development at METAL, where Anjali Rawat joins METAL Communications as Associate Creative Director from March. Her last stint was at Ogilvy, where she looked after and led brands like Cadbury, Bru, Huggies, Fullerton India, Parle Krackjack, Godrej Properties, and Kissan.

With a Masters in Fine Arts from the Academy of Art College in San Francisco and having worked across agencies like The Highway 1 in San Francisco, Euro RSCG, Lemon and Ogilvy, she has close to a decade's experience in driving the creative thinking and visual language on brands across categories like FMCG, Banking, durable, media and real estate.

Trilokjit Sengupta, Creative Director, METAL says: "Anjali has extensive experience across many brands such as Cadbury, Bru, Huggies, Parle, Kissan, Godrej, Annapurna, Standard Chartered and Sony Max among others. Incidentally, she was a part of the team that had launched zoOm when the channel started out 6 years back. I feel certain that the team will benefit from her experience and guidance."

Anjali says: "After working with creative powerhouses like Lemon and Ogilvy, I didn't want to lower the momentum. Metal as an agency is perfectly aligned to what I was looking for. With the perfect balance of creative and strategy, so rare in agencies today, I am certain my innings at Metal will be a long and memorable one. "

With a San Francisco silver award and 3 silver Abbys, Anjali is well feted in the industry as a Creative professional.