What would Aggie do? A mentor who keeps the creative fire alive

“Chai ke liye jaise toast hota hai…” You probably sang this iconic Airtel jingle with friends or set it as a ringtone. I could hum it long before I knew who created it.

It was the brainchild of Agnello Dias. Or, as almost everyone here calls him, Aggi. Sometimes Aggie, Agi, or Aggy, but rarely ever Agnello.

His work for Bajaj Auto, Complan, Heinz, Indian Oil, Times of India, Nike, Airtel, and many more places him among the industry’s all-time greats. 

Aggie has also quietly shaped the leaders of today, Harshad, Kainaz, Pallavi, and many others, mentoring creatives who now lead legacy agencies and nimble independents alike. He never sought credit, and in each of them lives a deep gratitude for a mentor who saw their potential, even when they couldn’t.

This Teacher’s Day, his mentees share the impact he has had on their careers and lives. 

Have you met Aggie? 

For some, Dias helped rewrite their paths. 

Kainaz Karmakar, now Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy India, called it sheer good fortune that Agnello Dias crossed her path. When she joined Leo Burnett, their worlds hardly overlapped. The first real meeting of minds happened over an open brief on saving tigers in India. 

She said, “I wrote a script that got picked as the best one by Aggi, and that’s where our journey began. We worked together on that film, and it earned me my first Cannes and Clio shortlist. It was only then that we started talking. Before that, it was just ‘hellos’ in the corridor.”

For Harshad Rajadhyaksha, now Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy India, the year 2000 marked a turning point. After 3 years in advertising, Aggie spotted his portfolio in the Chaitra Leo Burnett office at Kemps Corner. That chance encounter opened the door to something bigger. 

“Aggi offered me a job as an art director,” Rajadhyaksha recalled. “I gleefully took it up, not quite realising then that this brilliant man who had recently created one of my favourite campaigns, ‘Bajaj Caliber – The Unshakeable’, was going to be my mentor, coach, motivator and idol for that next critical decade of my life, across two agencies.”

It was under Aggi’s watch that he found his footing and discovered one of his most important creative partnerships. As he put it, “That moment has set into motion the direction my career took, including finding my cherished partnership with Kainaz, since it was Aggi who teamed us up.”

For Pallavi Chakravarti, now Founder & CCO, Fundamental, the story began in reverse. She had just joined JWT as a Copy Supervisor when Aggi left to start Taproot. “Our story didn’t start with him coming into my life. It began with him leaving it,” she said. The only overlap came through Rin, a brand he continued to consult on.

Two years later, she moved to Grey, and Harshad and Kainaz, her then bosses, went to Ogilvy. She was confident that Aggi had long forgotten her. But out of the blue came a call that changed everything, an invitation to join him and Paddy (Santosh Padhi) at Taproot. This time, she stayed.

Chakravarti said, “This time, no one left in a hurry. We worked together for nearly ten years after that, and I can safely say that he has been the most defining influence in my career.”

For Neeraj Kanitkar, now Co-founder, Fundamental, it was love at first sight with a piece of work. Back then, as a copy trainee, he came across Pakya, a Times of India film, and was floored by its perfection. He had to know who was behind it. The answer, of course, was Aggi and Taproot. 

“I stalked, chased, and hounded Aggi until he gave me a job.” Kanitkar laughed. That persistence paid off, leading to almost ten years at Taproot, years he credited as the period he truly came into his own as a creative and professional.

For Kartik Vijay, now a cinematographer and once an art director, the first meeting was set up by chance. His then boss and close friend, Delano, had just moved from TBWA Anthem to Chaitra Leo Burnett and insisted he meet Aggie, who was heading the Bombay office at the time. That introduction, Kartik recalled, changed everything.

“Aggie is one of the most important people responsible for who I am today, be it as an ex–art director in advertising or as a cinematographer now. He’s the reason I became a cinematographer in the first place, and he shaped me not just professionally but also as a person.”

The beginnings may have been different, a chance script, a portfolio review, a sudden phone call, or even a film that sparked obsession, but in each case, Aggi’s presence marked a turning point. 

The lessons of leadership

To his mentees, lessons from Aggi weren’t handed down in speeches but absorbed in the trenches, watching him work, rewrite, and guide. 

Rajadhyaksha still carries one line as gospel: “In our profession, talent is overrated. Temperament is underrated.” It was Aggi’s way of reminding them that resilience matters more than flashes of brilliance, the long-term game belongs to those who show up every day, despite rejection.

For Chakravarti, the mantra was equally blunt: “When the chips are down, the only answer is a better ad.” No hand-wringing, no excuses, just sharper work.

Karmakar learned the power of focus. Not the aggressive, alpha presence the industry often valorises, but a quieter, steadier intensity. She remembers how Aggi could pour that focus into a problem until it cracked open to reveal the idea within. It became her own compass in moments of doubt.

If these folks recalled temperament, resilience, and focus, Hetal Ajmera, now Co-Founder, Sharpener, pointed to something else altogether: his curiosity. Having met him as a junior art Director at Leo Burnett, she remembered how he drew even the youngest creatives into conversations. 

“He is extremely informed about almost everything, you can bring up any topic under the sun, and he’ll dive into it with genuine excitement and involvement,” Ajmera said. “That taught me that true creativity isn’t just about the work we produce, it’s about how deeply we engage with the world.”

Titus Upputuru, now Founder, Film Maker & Chief Creative Officer, The Titus Upputuru Company, echoed that sentiment but framed it differently. At Taproot, where he worked under him, Aggi gave him the rare gift of freedom: to lead pitches, manage client relationships, and own his decisions without micromanagement. 

“The thing that left a great impression on me was his simplicity,” Upputuru said. “The simplest way in which he could slice through the clutter of jargon and dig straight to the kernel of challenge or insight.” 

For Kanitkar, it was his obsession with details, sweating the tiniest word in a script because you never know which small choice makes the whole thing great.

Listening to them, I realised that no two lessons were the same, yet together they formed a kind of leadership playbook that Aggi never wrote down but passed on. 

Each mentee carries a different piece of him, and when you put them all together, you see the whole picture of who Aggie is. 

Memories

For Aggie’s mentees, memories of him arrive in small, deeply human moments.

Upputuru remembered reaching out to him in what now feels like a trivial crisis. He had lost the network while on a shoot in Goa, and Airtel stores couldn’t help, helplines had no answers, and frustration was mounting. 

He shared, “Finally, I called up Aggi through a local number, and he asked me to give him a couple of hours. Viola, I got the network in less than two hours. I don’t know what he did, but the network came, and I was beaming ear to ear at this boss who was so much of help!” 

Karmakar recalled working on a Tata Salt brief where her script and Aggie’s script were shortlisted. To her surprise, Aggie fought hard in the client meeting for hers to be made. 

She said, “Aggi came to my desk with his red diary. He started reading out the screenplay of my script, which he had written overnight! Scene by scene, he narrated it to me, and I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that Aggi had spent the night or early morning (he often wrote early morning) crafting my idea and making it shine. Never took credit for it.” 

Few leaders elevate their team’s ideas at the cost of their own, and that was Aggie.

And when it was time to say goodbye, the weight of his absence hit her in a way no late-night rewrite ever had. “Aggi’s farewell, his leaving became real to me only then, and I cried all the way in the cab. I didn’t know if I could make it without him but I think he did.”

In his early years, Rajadhyaksha discovered a colleague had joined at a much higher salary despite having similar experience. Confused and disheartened, he went to Aggie for answers. What followed was less a justification and more a parable. 

He said, “In Aggie’s experience, he had seen two types of people: The sprint runners and the marathon runners. He had me pegged as someone who was in love with this profession for life, hence a long-distance marathon runner. He simply told me, ‘that is not your race. You have many miles to enjoy running. Focus on where you are headed. I think you are running your marathon very well. And the rewards at the end of your long run are far richer.” That wisdom, he said, calmed him instantly, and stayed with him forever.

But his fondest memories of Aggie are of chai and Parle-G with juniors at the neighbourhood tapri, or dinners on late nights where Aggie insisted the youngest order what they couldn’t yet afford. “All done with the quiet no-fuss Aggi-ness that is the man,” he shared.

Chakravarti, too, recalled the way his calm rubbed off on everyone around him. When she would nervously ask if a pitch had gone well, Aggie’s trademark response was always the same: “It was a good pitch as pitches go, and as pitches go, it went.” 

Ajmera recalled a time when a colleague risked missing Goafest because he hadn’t finished a leaflet. Aggie, instead of reprimanding, quietly completed the job himself. “That moment has always stayed with me, because it reflected who he truly was, selfless, kind, and someone who never let hierarchy get in the way of humanity.”

Once a mentor, always a mentor 

For his mentees, he remains their sounding board, their compass, the quiet voice that steadies them when the chaos of advertising takes over. 

“Having a mentor is great, but having Aggi as a mentor is something else. Whether I speak to him every week or once a year, we pick up right where we left. I listen to him and each time, it teaches me something new and incredible,” said Karmarkar. 

Rajyadhakshya pointed out how, even today, when faced with a daunting challenge, the question that guides him and Kainaz is deceptively simple: “What would Aggi do?” 

For Kanitkar, the real proof of Aggie’s impact lies in how his way of thinking ripples through the industry. “Just think about the number of creatives, account management peeps, clients, directors, and so many more that worked under him who continue to create so much of the truly good work in the industry. Who, in turn, mentors so many more. The influence is just staggering.”

Kartik Vijay added another dimension: “It’s essential to have a mentor, whether in advertising or in anything else in life. You do get stuck, and you need someone to pull you out or simply say something that opens another path. That’s what Aggie did for me, time and again. He didn’t just open doors; he paved the road.

Aggy’s influence lives in people in the way they think, the way they lead, the way they steady themselves when doubt creeps in.

For some, he is the reason they found their path. For others, he is the one who quietly sharpened their creative instincts. And for all, he is the mentor who never really stepped out of the room. He shaped an industry that, knowingly or not, keeps asking itself the same question: What would Aggie do?