Published on: April 22, 2026

Gurugram, India – April 21, 2026 – Marketing + Media Alliance (MMA) will host MMA IMPACT India 2026 on May 6 and 7 at The Westin, Gurugram. The 15th edition will bring together 20+ senior speakers and keynote voices across brands, platforms, media, and investors. Think: two days of focused conversations on one urgent shift: marketing is no longer judged by campaigns. It is judged by contribution to growth, margin, retention, and enterprise value.

This year’s theme is Advancing Marketers’ Ability to Create Value. The agenda is built around the pressures now reshaping the function. Rising acquisition costs. Fragmented attention. AI disruption. Retail media acceleration. Boardroom scrutiny. IMPACT 2026 responds to that reality by positioning marketing as a commercial growth engine, not a support function.

Why this year matters

IMPACT 2026 is not built as a broad industry showcase. It is built as a sharper business platform. One that addresses where marketing is under the most pressure, and where its value is being most closely examined. That includes enterprise value, AI’s real commercial role, full-funnel integration, measurement, effectiveness, and financial accountability. Those are also the strongest editorial territories identified for this year’s event.

The speaker mix reflects that intent: Manish Tiwari of Nestle, Kannan Sitaram of Fireside Ventures, Gulshan Verma of Amazon Ads, Neha Jolly Sawhney of Snap Inc, Sunder Balasubramanian of Myntra, Saugato Bhowmik of Meta, Siddharth Shekhar of Google, Saakshi Verma Menon of Pepsico, Deepit Purkayastha of Inshorts, Soumya Mohanty of Kantar, Gunjan Khetan of Perfetti Van Melle, Sunita Bangard of Aditya Birla Group and Prasanth Kumar of WPP Media, among others: https://mmaglobal.com/event/mma-impact-india-2026#speakers

“The conversation around marketing has changed. It is no longer enough to be memorable. Marketers are now expected to prove commercial contribution. IMPACT India 2026 is designed to help leaders advance their ability to create value in ways the business can see, measure and act on” said Moneka Khurana, Country Head and Board Member, MMA India.

Launch and signal moments

This year’s agenda includes major launch moments that add substance beyond stage conversations:

• AI Marketing Maturity Study, an MMA and EY initiative focused on how marketing leaders and brands are building AI maturity across content, measurement, media, personalisation, modelling, and insights
• Modern Marketing Reckoner 2026: The Incumbent-Insurgent Growth Playbook (6th edition) – an MMA India and WPP Media initiative, anchored in the exchange between scale and disruption, legacy and challenger thinking

Day one: from market cap to marketing accountability

Day one tracks the biggest shifts now shaping modern marketing:

• Vivek Gambhir explores When Machines Do Marketing, What Do Marketers Do?
• Greishma Singh and Varun Sethuraman examine attention, context, intent, and trust in the AI era
• Snap Inc decodes how discovery drives growth: rethinking the funnel in an attention economy
• The agenda takes on agentic AI, martech change, and the AI transformation mandate for CMOs
• Moneka Khurana and Sandeep Pandey lead the AI Marketing Maturity Report release and discussion
• Gunjan Khetan, Sunder Balasubramaniam and Sunita Bangard close the business case with what CMOs and CFOs get wrong about each other and how to fix it.

“India’s marketers are operating in a more demanding business climate. Expectations are higher. The margin for vague marketing language is lower. IMPACT India 2026 brings together the people, the pressure points, and the practical questions that matter now,” said Rohit Dadwal, CEO and Board Member, MMA APAC, and Global Head of SMARTIES. 

Day two: modern growth systems and new playbooks

Day two shifts from diagnosis to operating models with one of the event’s strongest industry moments: 

• The launch of MMA India & WPP Media’s 6th edition of the Modern Marketing Reckoner: The Incumbent-Insurgent Growth Playbook.
• Key contributors decoding the report: what legacy brands can learn from challengers, and what insurgents must learn from incumbents to drive the next phase of growth.
• Anindita Veluri of Adobe on agentic AI vs traditional martech: what changes and what breaks. 
• Manisha Kapoor of ASCI decoding responsible AI and navigating the new marketing rulebook. 
• And a session on AI-driven buyer journey and discovery; concluding with the invite-only IMPACT Soirée.

Who should be in the room

IMPACT 2026 is built for the marketing ecosystem. Be it CMOs, growth leaders, digital and AI leaders, brand and business heads, agencies, media, publishers, platforms or investors. 

The partner mix of the event reinforces the media diversity at play; enablers of growth drivers reflecting an evolving marketing playbook at cross-ecosystem depth. Representation varies across Snap Inc., Inshorts & Public, Amazon Ads, Google, Mobavenue, The Trade Desk, InMobi Glanz, Skewb.ai, Perfetti Van Melle, ad:tech, Campaign India, and Adtech Today.

MMA IMPACT India 2026 will take place on May 6 and 7, 2026, at The Westin, Gurugram. For marketers and business leaders looking to understand where modern marketing is heading next, this is where the sharper conversations will happen: https://mmaglobal.com/event/mma-impact-india-2026

The Marketing + Media Alliance (MMA) is the only trade association that unites the entire marketing ecosystem — CMOs, MarTech, AdTech, media, and marketer-supported companies — working collaboratively to architect the future of marketing while delivering growth today. Led by CMOs, the Alliance drives marketing change by tackling unanswered questions and challenging entrenched assumptions. We are unapologetically committed to science and inquiry, knowing that transformative impact only comes from constructively disrupting the status quo. Through peer-driven collaboration, the Alliance helps members aggressively adopt proven, science-backed practices. Each year, MMA Global invests millions in breakthrough research to deliver unassailable truths, actionable insights, and practical tools. By enlightening, empowering, and enabling marketers, we shape the future of marketing and propel business growth.

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