MUMBAI — Mahindra Group has hired Abanti Sankaranarayanan as chief group public affairs officer. Sankaranarayanan will lead group public affairs (India & international), group sustainability and the group risk & economist functions. She will be taking over the group public affairs portfolio from Manoj Chugh, who will be retiring on April 1, 2023.  Prior to joining the Mahindra Group, Sankaranarayanan was chief strategy and corporate affairs officer at Diageo India where her responsibilities included public policy, regulatory and trade, market access, corporate communication, corporate social impact, strategy and ventures.
 
SINGAPORE — Strategic communications consultancy Rice has added new consultants (pictured) to its Singapore office. Hsu Lin joins Rice as an account director after more than 11 years at Ninemer Communications. Rice has also welcomed eight new consultants: Gillian Pinto as a senior account manager, Magel Ordoñezand Saeful Hakim as account manager, Alexandra Koh and Sarah Sim as senior account executives, as well as Ainul Mardiyah, Nursyazwani Jamil and Deanna Nabilah as account executives.
 
HONG KONG — Flare Communications has launched MindDATA, an AI-driven influencer platform that provides real-time, in-depth insights into demographic & psychographic data of 120 million influencers worldwide. The global real-time data covers seven languages including Chinese and their audience throughout various social media including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
 
SINGAPORE — Oddle, a F&B technology company headquartered in Singapore, has appointed SPRG Singapore as its B2B public relations agency. SPRG was tasked to deliver strategic, creative communications to drive awareness, build brand credibility, and engage the business community as Oddle goes deeper and wider to provide solutions to F&B merchants. Through its communication efforts, SPRG hopes to cement brand leadership for Oddle in the F&B technology sector as a top-of-mind brand in the industry.