Sunitha Simon Leaves Airtel To Lead Communications For Corteva Agriscience In South Asia
Sunitha Simon has joined Corteva Agriscience as communications lead for South Asia, leaving Airtel after more than 16 years. She announced the move herself on LinkedIn, calling it a deliberate choice driven by purpose.
- New role: communications lead, South Asia, Corteva Agriscience
- Leaves: Airtel, which she joined in January 2010
- Most recent Airtel role: general manager and communications lead, B2C, from June 2022
- Before that: national communications lead for Homes and DTH, June 2020 to June 2022
- Earlier: communications head for South and East, June 2018 to June 2020
- Airtel work included: the 5G launch, the company's AI tool and its spam protection service
- Career start: content programmer and radio jockey with Orange Media
What Sunitha Simon Brings To Corteva
A decade and a half of launch communications at a consumer brand that most of India uses every day. At Airtel she moved from corporate communications through regional roles to national consumer communications, and the last stretch covered some of the most contested messaging in telecom: 5G, an AI product, and spam protection, which is a trust story more than a technology one.
That last one is the most transferable. Explaining a protective technology to people who are suspicious of the company offering it is also a fair description of communications in agriculture.
Why Agriscience Is A Harder Audience
Corteva sells seeds and crop protection. Its communications have to reach farmers, dealers, agronomists, regulators and policymakers, often in several languages and usually on subjects where the science is contested in public long before it is settled in private.
Telecom communications is loud and national. Agricultural communications is quiet, regional and relationship-led, and a message that works in a Mumbai newsroom may mean nothing in a district where the decision to plant is actually taken.
Why The Direction Of The Move Matters
Simon framed the switch around purpose and the importance of food security, not around scale or title. That is an unusual reason to leave a flagship consumer brand after sixteen years, and it tells you what she expects the work to be.
The interesting part is the skill transfer: a mass-market consumer playbook arriving in a business where the customer is also a producer. Corteva's India operations are at corteva.in. More people.
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