Balaji Vaidyanathan is an award winning and accomplished global marketing leader with over 20 years of experience driving ground-breaking integrated marketing campaigns and strategic initiatives, leading from the front to build and inspire global cross-functional teams across complex organizations to enhance brand positioning, value, and revenues. In his current role since February 2019, Balaji is responsible for building the marketing value proposition and growing the brand’s strategic and digital footprint for the CEEMEA region, based out of Dubai. He also drives the marketing efforts for a global strategic project to launch the first ever fintech wealth management platform in Germany as part of a broader European market penetration strategy.
Prior to this, Balaji was Deputy Head – Marketing for Franklin Templeton India based out of Mumbai, since February 2010, responsible for multi-million $ budgets and leading all key brand initiatives including advertising, investor education, events and advisor engagement. In the initial part of his career, he was associated in various capacities with the Edelweiss Group, Lotus Mutual Fund and the Aditya Birla Group, all based in India.
Balaji has been one of the early adopters of leveraging gamification, content marketing and storytelling in the mutual fund industry to promote investor education in the online space. His deep understanding of consumer marketing and customer life-cycle journeys have won him over 100 awards globally across creativity, content, innovation and effectiveness.
Balaji is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK and holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi. He also holds a Professional Diploma In Digital Marketing and has completed multiple Leadership Development Programs with the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow.
