The architect of curiosity: Harsh Kapadia’s blueprint for Grey India

In the dynamic, often chaotic world of Indian advertising, Harsh Kapadia represents a particular type of homecoming. After two decades working across global markets including New York and London, he returned to Mumbai as Chief Creative Officer at Grey India on the 2nd of April 2025. His career has accumulated the expected hardware, several Cannes Lions in mobile, entertainment, and health advocacy, gold at the Jay Chiat and APG Creative Strategy awards, but the work itself spans a wide range.From  'Delivering for America' platform for the United States Postal Service, to the  Google Pixel 4 launch that delivered phones in Domino's pizza boxes, and 'Tick Tock,' a campaign on plastic pollution among the list of work he has done.

What he brings back is not simply international experience, but a set of ideas about how creativity functions—and where it comes from. He frames his core belief around a compelling, modern-day parable: the Apple TV show Severance, where work and personal memories are surgically divided. For Kapadia, it illustrates what creativity is not. His view: it depends on what happens outside the agency, not just within it.

At Grey, this translates into an approach built around concepts he calls 'Cultural MacGyverism' and the 'Pub Test'—frameworks that will require explanation. Whether these represent a genuine departure or familiar thinking in new packaging remains an open question. What follows is Kapadia's own account: how he plans to reshape the agency, what he believes makes work effective in the Indian market, and why he thinks the context here demands something different from the models that prevailed in New York or London.

The foundation

To understand Kapadia's vision for Grey, one must first understand his own journey. Growing up in a family of lawyers, a legal career seemed inevitable. Yet he found himself dreading subjects like history, unable to connect with its dense texts. Instead, he gravitated towards the logic of maths and science and found his own way of learning. “I realised that I could recall the entire answer for a subject I disliked by visually drawing out the concepts. It suggested that I had more of a picture and audio memory than a reading one, which steered me away from a career that revolved around law books,” he recalls, hinting at the visual-first mindset that now informs his creative direction.

His fascination with advertising began in childhood, where he was the kid for whom everything stopped when the commercials came on TV. This passive interest became an active pursuit through a 3D animation course and self-taught experiments with editing tools. But it was a pivotal internship that solidified his career path, placing him in an environment where ideas were valued above technical proficiency. “I was very fortunate to be surrounded by the right people who took me in without the typical degree. Ultimately, it all comes down to the power of an idea, because while technical software skills can be taught, innate curiosity cannot,” he asserts.

This early lesson now forms the bedrock of the culture he intends to build at Grey India: an environment where innate curiosity and passion are the most prized assets. His journey away from the rigid precedent of law also forged a desire to challenge established systems—a trait he now applies to breaking down corporate templates that stifle evolution.

The core creative engine

A central, non-negotiable pillar of Kapadia's leadership is his belief that creativity is a direct byproduct of lived experience. He argues passionately for genuine work-life balance, not for the sake of rest, but as a strategic imperative for the agency. “A big element of my philosophy has been that you need to get out and experience life, because that is what will ultimately be reflected in your work. If we don’t expose ourselves to the world, our creative output becomes a closed loop of timelines, calendars, and design files,” he insists.

He points to the COVID-19 pandemic as the ultimate proof of this concept. “If you look at the COVID period, it was the perfect global example. Every single ad looked exactly the same; there was nothing different. Everybody was thanking medical workers, everybody was clapping on plates, everybody looked depressed in their houses. Nobody experienced anything different, and it showed in the work,” he observes.

To combat this creative stagnation at Grey, he is adamant that his team must stop finding inspiration in other ads and instead look to the world around them, whether it's the booming interior design scene in Mumbai's restaurants or the elevated craft of Netflix productions.

This philosophy directly impacts how he views the workday. He contrasts the structured, "hectic" nature of work in the West with the more "chaotic" environment in India, which he attributes to looser commitments. His goal is to introduce a structure that prioritises life outside the office, enabling his team to return with richer perspectives. He explains, “If we make a conscious effort to finish the workday by 6:30 PM, there is a higher probability that team members will engage in external activities like visiting a restaurant, a bar, or a museum. Somewhere, subconsciously, those experiences will often lead to you returning the next day with a new idea”.

Cultural MacGyverism

At the heart of Kapadia's strategy for transforming Grey's creative department is a concept he calls 'Cultural MacGyverism'. Inspired by the TV character who creates ingenious solutions by combining unexpected items, Kapadia applies this principle to people. “The character MacGyver takes two unexpected things, puts them together, and gets out of a situation. My hiring strategy is predicated on that same principle: pairing two unexpected individuals, as this combination will invariably produce a result that was not initially anticipated,” he explains.

He provides vivid examples: pairing a Brazilian with an Indian, a Brit with an American, or someone from North India with someone from South India. The goal is to create a dynamic tension of perspectives. “If you put a rich kid and a poor kid together, you will get something you haven't heard before. In contrast, if you put two rich kids together, you will simply get what the rich do. The same applies to two people from disadvantaged backgrounds,” he elaborates.

Kapadia is clear that this is not a diversity initiative for the sake of appearances; that is merely a welcome byproduct. “I am not hiring for diversity just to fill out an HR excel sheet; that is a byproduct. My primary motivation for this hiring approach is a selfish one: to generate a wider, more diverse range of ideas,” he states, positioning the strategy as a direct tool to deliver more innovative and unexpected work for Grey's clients.

This framework is also about breaking down internal silos. He believes everyone, including account management and planners, should be immersed in creativity, proposing that they study groundbreaking ideas to better challenge and collaborate with creative teams.

Interdependence, visual craft, and the pub test: The vision for Grey India

Kapadia's vision for Grey's creative output is precise and ambitious. He aims to move the agency and its clients towards an "ingredient brand" philosophy. “I am more interested in working with brands to help them believe in being an ingredient brand, rather than a singular brand that represents everything to one consumer. The reality is that consumers perceive a brand as just one ingredient in their lives, not as the end-all and be-all,” he argues. By embracing this role, he believes brands gain permission to be more disruptive and engage in unexpected collaborations, creating genuine, two-way interdependence between the brand and culture.

Practically, this will be achieved through a heightened focus on visual craft and storytelling. “It is my intention to steer the agency towards a more visually-focused approach, emphasizing our ability to tell compelling stories with less reliance on words. I believe that will force us to change our aesthetics and stand out in a country with so many language and cultural barriers,” he states.

His ultimate measure of success is refreshingly simple and human: the "Pub Test." “The true measure of success for me is whether people will talk about the work at the pub. This applies not only to consumers, but also to the clients who approved it and the creatives who made it. Are they proud enough to discuss it, or will they never even mention that they worked on it?” he asks. This ties into his broader ambition for Grey to deliver "business ideas, not just advertising—solutions so integrated they could potentially shift a client's supply chain or operational strategy.”

AI, risk, and brave partnerships at Grey

Looking ahead, Kapadia addresses the industry's defining challenges with a pragmatic, idea-centric approach. He views AI not as a threat or an idea generator, but as a crucial "wingman" or support system. “The true value of AI lies in its ability to give us time back, which should be used to become more thorough with what we are doing and to push boundaries through curiosity. Our job as individuals will be to push the possibilities with AI, rather than take it easy because of AI,” he says, warning against using it as a shortcut that depreciates critical thinking. For Grey, AI tools like WPP Open will be used to push the limits of imagination, not replace it.

This push for innovation requires a healthy appetite for creative risk. Kapadia is unequivocal on this point: “Breakthrough work, by its nature, does not achieve universal consensus. If you want to create it, you must understand that it never gets a nod from everybody. If an idea doesn't make someone in the room at least slightly uncomfortable, it is likely not pushing the boundaries far enough”. He acknowledges this requires brave clients, and that building the necessary trust is the agency's responsibility.

His method for fostering these partnerships is to go deeper than the marketing department. “The conversation with a client must often extend beyond the parameters of a single campaign. It is bigger and deeper than that. It’s about truly understanding their business, what’s bothering them, and what’s keeping them up at night,” he explains, advocating for a deep understanding of the client's entire business to prove that the agency is invested in their success, not just in creating a "cool idea".

As he steers Grey India into its next chapter, Harsh Kapadia's strategy is clear. It is a vision built on the foundational belief that curiosity, fueled by genuine life experience and structured through the innovative framework of 'Cultural MacGyverism' will produce work that not only passes the Pub Test but creates true interdependence between brands and Indian culture.

His own journey has been one of constant change and inquiry. "It is the constant state of change and evolution that fuels my curiosity," he concludes. It is this exact quality he is now embedding into the DNA of Grey India.