MUMBAI: Twitter launched its first business leadership summit in Asia titled #TwitterUdaan in Gurgaon. The summit brought together approximately 200 industry leaders over thought-provoking presentations and panel discussions on the theme of #FutureForward.

Along with Twitter’s executives, other representatives present at the inaugural forum were from Future Brands, Group M, HDFC Life, Ogilvy & Mather, OLX, PepsiCo, Starcom, Tata Motors, Unmetric, Vodafone India, Yes Bank, and Yu.

#TwitterUdaan was punctuated with the launch of Twitter’s first-ever #TwitterInfluencerIndex, a study to understand the effects of C-Suite engagement, who are the top CEOs on Twitter are and what constitutes their success on the influential communications platform. The index highlighted the 100 top C-suite executives on Twitter from around the world. The various leaders were Mahindra Group chairman and MD Anand Mahindra, Kotak Mahindra Band executive vice chairman and MD Uday Kotak, Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal, Flipkart executive chairman and founder Sachin Bansal, Olacabs.com co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal, Snapdeal.com co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl and InMobi founder and CEO Naveen Tewari.

“India is the growth engine for Asia-Pacific on Twitter. We are committed to India and the launch of #TwitterUdaan is about celebrating the creativity and innovation from India. The time is ripe for India to lead innovation and we want to help them soar and leverage Twitter in the digital age,” said Twitter VP International markets Shailesh Rao. “CEO participation on Twitter leads to better communication and it is heartening to see India account for nearly 50 percent of Asia Pacific C-suite executives listed in the #TwitterInfluencerIndex.”

The summit was focused on five big trends of 2016 i.e. live, video, disruption innovation, content marketing, data, and media-first. The opening keynote on 'Future is Live' was presented by Twitter managing director of Southeast Asia, India, Middle East and North Africa Parminder Singh who opened up the floor for engaging conversations with his presentation on Twitter’s live connection to culture.

Following to that was an engaging fireside chat between FutureBrands India MD Shailesh and CEO Santosh Desai on how brands need to build authentic relationships with their customers.

Global Brands and Agencies VP Jean-Philippe (JP) Maheu took the audience through content best practices in 'Future is Content' and provided insight on how to engage a customer, hold their attention and why video and media-rich content always wins on the platform.

Brand Strategy Asia Pacific head Steven Kalifowitz challenged advertising norms, showcased case studies and ideas that stood out of the clutter, and asked brands to think out-of-the-box using innovative, disruptive strategies in ‘Disruptive Innovation'.

Guest speaker Unmetric CEO and co-founder Lakshmanan Narayan presented a data-driven future showing how brands can use data to drive social media accountability and business outcomes.

While Twitter Asia Pacific and emerging markets senior director product specialist Maya Hari presented on a media-first future how we are now living at a time where media is increasingly live, interactive, and visual. This led to a thought-provoking panel discussion with guest speakers from CNBC TV18, PepsiCo, Tata Motors and The Economist on how being media-forward is not an option anymore.

#TwitterInfluencerIndex measures how influential the world’s top executives are on Twitter. The Index highlights how CEOs develop their digital influence and their ability to create an effect, change opinions and behaviours, and drive measurable outcomes using Twitter.Reach, relevance and resonance on Twitter are the cornerstones of the Index.