In the high-stakes world of mobility, few leaders bridge the gap between the disciplined heritage of automotive giants and the chaotic velocity of new-age tech. Ankit Taparia, Head of Marketing-Yulu, inhabits this intersection perfectly. He understands that while history offers lessons in consistency, the modern market demands ruthless adaptation. 

In this conversation, he dissects the delicate art of brand building in an era of impatience. He moves beyond standard marketing playbooks to reveal a harder truth: that in the fight against market inertia, the safest path is often the quickest way to irrelevance. 

You’ve worked across both legacy automotive brands and a new-age mobility company. How has this diverse journey shaped how you build brands today? 

The OEM world has taught me many foundational aspects of building high-involvement brands. When you have brands that have been around for decades, there’s a reason they’ve lasted. It’s because they knew what they stood for; even minor deviations were painstakingly debated and evaluated. You’ve got to solidify the core in every brand experience. And over time, that consistency compounds. 

But at a startup, you don’t have that luxury. You are fighting against inertia constantly. The market wants things to stay the way they are, and if you move too slowly trying to build “consistency,” you’re dead. You have to evolve fast. So now I think about building brands like this: 

“Know your core and protect it fiercely, but don’t be precious about how you express it.” 

You need to stay just ahead of where consumers are. Not so far that you lose them, but not so safe that they forget you exist. 

You’ve managed brands at very different stages, from challengers to category leaders. What has that taught you about balancing consistency with reinvention? 

With big established brands, especially the iconic ones, you don’t walk in and start changing things on day one. The legacy of the brand is a huge responsibility. You have to understand why people love the brand, the role it plays, what it’s always stood for, and the history behind it. Then, from there, you evolve carefully. 

Challengers are the opposite. You need a wedge, something that makes people stop and pay attention. It could be the product itself, or it’s how you deliver it, or it’s just a better story. But you can’t play it safe. You have to prove you’re different and watch the data obsessively to know when something’s working. Honestly, there’s no one formula. It depends entirely on where the company is and what’s happening in the market.

What do you find most rewarding when it comes to meaningful consumer engagement across ATL, digital, and growth? 

The best moments are when marketing solves something for the user. Like when you build a journey that removes friction or answers a question your users didn’t even know they had yet. We have so many tools at our disposal today: personalisation, automation, and more. But the trick is making them feel helpful and value-adding to the user, not creepy or annoying. 

“I love the push and pull between scale and precision.” 

While big campaigns show you’re real and that you matter, fixing one person’s specific problem opens doors for fixing it for a hundred thousand more people. 

The electric mobility space is evolving rapidly. What excites you most about building a brand here, and what unique opportunities does it open up? 

EVs aren’t a novelty anymore. They’re becoming a normal choice, and that’s huge progress. The category isn’t just about selling vehicles. It’s a part of how people think about getting around cities entirely. It’s about mobility. While advertising helps get initial attention, the brand is really built every time someone turns the vehicle on, swaps a battery, gets their scooter serviced, renews a subscription, or even in the moments when they realize they just saved money without thinking about it. 

“The experience is the brand. If the product works and makes their life easier, people will talk about it. If it doesn’t, no amount of creativity will make up for its absence.” 

You’ve spoken about making sustainability aspirational. How can brands blend purpose with creativity to drive adoption? 

“Sustainability only works if it’s the better choice, not just the “right” choice. “ 

People don’t want to be guilted into buying something. You have to build alternatives that don’t ask them to compromise. Actually, I think constraints help here. They force you to design smarter products and solutions, and tell a more honest story. Make it easy, make it feel modern, and make people feel good about choosing it. Not because they “should,” but because it’s genuinely better for them. These constraints might just be the fuel your creativity needs.

As mobility, technology, and consumer expectations converge, what trends will define the next phase of brand building?

I believe the fundamentals don’t change. You still need to be visible and relevant. But customer expectations are moving faster than ever now. Someone gets spoiled by a great food delivery app, and suddenly, they expect the same thing when booking a ride. Brand building is becoming less about big campaign moments and more about whether every single touchpoint actually works. It has to be seamless, instant, and on-demand. I think differentiation will come less from what you say or show, and more from how you behave as a company: how the experience feels and how the ecosystem connects throughout the brand ownership. 

“Brands need to move beyond a generic ‘customer first’ to a specific ‘customer journey first’ mindset.”