Janardhan Pokala, former global brand head, Atlys, has co-founded Kali, a multidisciplinary creative agency working across brand strategy, mainline advertising, digital, film, still production, and emerging technologies.

Prior to Atlys, he spent more than a decade across leading agencies and brands, shaping identities, narratives, and campaigns across categories and geographies.

Kali is headquartered in Delhi and works with brands across India.

Pokala said, “Kali is a response to how fragmented the work has become. We’ve built systems where specialists operate in silos. Someone comes up with the idea, someone else is responsible for scaling it on social media, and someone else leads the strategy, but the work suffers because responsibility is fragmented. Along the way, an industry built to challenge has settled for approval. We’re building an agency where creative, strategy, and execution sit at the same table, where the people who create the work are involved from the first conversation to the final output. And where ideas aren’t diluted as they move through layers. The agencies that have shaped culture didn’t do it by playing it safe. They stayed independent in spirit, questioning conventions, backing strong points of view, and taking responsibility for the work they put out. That’s the kind of agency we want to build.”