The Story of K.V. Sridhar, the Artist the Industry Calls Pops
Before the Cannes Lions and the corner office, there was a young man in South India painting cinema billboards by hand, thirty and sixty feet tall, learning that a single image had to stop a crowd from across a busy street. That instinct for the arresting picture stayed with K.V. Sridhar for the next forty years. The industry knows him simply as Pops, and few people have shaped modern Indian advertising with as much craft, or for as long.
Who he is
K.V. Sridhar is one of India's most awarded creative leaders, best known for his long run as Chief Creative Officer of Leo Burnett in India. Over a career that began in the 1980s he has collected more than twenty Cannes Lions and a place in Campaign Asia's Hall of Fame. Among Indian advertising legends, he is the craftsman, the art director who never stopped thinking like an artist.
Early life and background
Pops grew up in Hyderabad and studied at Osmania University before training in the fine arts. His path into advertising was anything but straight. He hand-painted movie hoardings, worked as a medical representative, trained as a drawing teacher, designed film sets, and by the age of eighteen was one of the youngest art directors on a South Indian feature film. He is dyslexic, something he has spoken about openly, and he found his voice early through pictures rather than words.
Into advertising and the name Pops
He entered advertising in the early 1980s and moved through Ulka, JWT Bangalore and Lintas before the role that would define him. The nickname arrived at Lintas around 1992. A second, younger Sridhar had joined the agency, and to tell the two apart the team began calling the senior man Pops. Alyque Padamsee, who ran Lintas, made it official. As Padamsee put it, since Sridhar led a creative team, "I gave him the moniker Pops."
Signature work
Pops did his defining work at Leo Burnett India, where he became Chief Creative Officer in the 2000s and stayed for close to fifteen years. He led Thums Up into its "Taste the Thunder" era, building the cola into a brand of adventure and nerve. He gave McDonald's India its value platform with "Aap Ke Zamaane Mein, Baap Ke Zamaane Ke Daam." He steered the modern renditions of Bajaj, and he helped build brands like Glucon-D and Tide. One of his most admired projects was not a film at all but the Gandhi font, an alphabet drawn so that Mahatma Gandhi's round glasses hide inside every letter.
Creative style
Pops has always argued that creative people should protect the work above everything else, and that awards are a byproduct, not the goal.
"The key is not to chase the awards but to elevate your craft and ideas."
He believes an artist is made by living fully, not by sitting safely inside a studio.
"Unfiltered life experiences are what help you become a truly creative person."
Industry impact
Pops helped make Indian creative work respected on the world stage, mentoring a generation of art directors and writers and pushing craft at a time when the industry was chasing scale. He has served on juries at Cannes, D and AD, The One Show, London International and New York Festivals, and he has kept working through the shift from television to digital rather than retreating from it.
Awards and recognition
He has won more than twenty Cannes Lions across his career, along with honours from D and AD, The One Show, Clio and others. In 2010 he received the New York Festivals Creative Achievement Award, and he was inducted into Campaign Asia's Hall of Fame as one of the most influential advertising and marketing leaders in the region.
What the industry says
Named tributes are surprisingly rare for a man so senior, in part because Pops is usually the one paying tribute to others. Profiling him, exchange4media captured the paradox of his stature and his manner, describing him as the rare humble legend who still returns every call, replies to every email and never lets a message go unread.
His peers tend to speak of him as a mentor first. He stayed close to his great creative rival Piyush Pandey, and after Pandey's death in 2025 it was Pops who wrote about the friendship behind the competition, a reminder that the two men who defined the era saw each other as craftsmen, not enemies.
Legacy
Pops is still working, now as Chief Creative Officer at Nihilent after his agency HyperCollective was acquired. Among Indian advertising legends he stands for craft above noise. He proved that an art director from Hyderabad who once painted billboards by hand could win on the world's biggest stages without ever losing the belief that the work, not the trophy, is the point.
Advertisement
