Volvo Car India has elevated Anuj Somani to head, integrated marketing and performance, effective September 2026. The move caps five years and one month with the automaker, during which Somani has held four roles, most recently overseeing brand, retail, digital and public relations from the Delhi NCR region.
A four-role ride to the top marketing seat
Somani joined Volvo Car India in October 2021 as senior marketing manager, brand. The brief then expanded to retailer marketing, and from April 2025 to August 2026 he ran marketing operations spanning brand, retail, digital and PR.
- Oct 2021–Mar 2024: Senior marketing manager, brand
- Apr 2024–Mar 2025: Senior marketing manager, brand and retailer marketing
- Apr 2025–Aug 2026: Marketing operations — brand, retail, digital and PR
- Sept 2026: Head, integrated marketing and performance
The integrated role brings those streams under one leader at a moment when Volvo Car India is focused on its electric transformation. Somani said he leads marketing operations at the company and creates campaigns that strengthen the brand while supporting the shift to electric vehicles.
Relevance as the organising problem
Somani has framed his career around a specific diagnosis: “most brands fail not because they lack products but because they lack relevance.” In crowded segments, he argues, even established brands get ignored when the story, strategy and customer experience do not connect.
That framing carries weight because of the breadth of his earlier roles. At LIXIL’s SATO business, he led global marketing communications for a social brand aiming to reach one in three consumers worldwide without access to safe sanitation. He spent six years as brand manager at Mahindra & Mahindra, working across product planning, consumer insight, digital marketing, CRM and rural activations. He also held marketing communications roles at VE Commercial Vehicles and Autocop India, and brand marketing roles at Onida.
What this move tells marketers
Placing brand and performance under a single integrated owner is a structural signal. For Volvo Car India, it connects the brand story with retail execution, digital efficiency and PR narrative during a technology transition. For marketing teams elsewhere, the message is to treat relevance as an operating goal, not a soft metric.
Before adding media pressure, the useful order is to align the story, the buying journey and the post-purchase experience. Visibility can generate recall, but relevance generates choice.
Source: Indian Television Dot Com
