It’s said that the good that people do lives on long after they are gone. In the case of advertising doyen and philanthropist Shambhu Venkatrao Sista — better known as Bobby Sista — the Laadli campaign that promotes gender equality, one of the initiatives of his organisation, Population First, has created a huge impact in the fight for gender equality. The nonagenarian adman passed away on 27 July in Mumbai.
Sista joined advertising inspired by his father Venkatrao Sista who founded Sista Sales and Publicity Services in the 1930s. When his father passed away in an air crash in 1951, Bobby Sista took over the agency. He had by then gained valuable experience, having launched and marketed Tinopal (which later became Ranipal) and as the first marketing manager of Reader’s Digest India. Under his watch, the ad agency was renamed Sista Advertising first and then AdArts, and produced some memorable campaigns like those for S Kumar’s and Hotshot, the aim and shoot camera. In 1998, the agency became a part of Saatchi & Saatchi.
Passionate about giving back to society, in 2002, Bobby Sista founded Population First, an organisation that addressed social issues. Its Laadli Awards have created quite a buzz. As industry veteran Ramesh Narayan explains, “The Laadli Awards focus attention on those who are doing their bit to amplify the importance of the right gender nuances in content creation and those who have written on gender related topics in the context of equality. This makes the awards not just unique but very important.”