22feet appoints Yash Dabi as vice president, technology growth

MUMBAI: Advertising agencies love to talk about artificial intelligence. Few can say they have put someone in charge of actually building it into the furniture. 22feet, the Omnicom Advertising India shop known for scrappy, culture-first campaigns, has just done exactly that. On 23rd July 2026 the agency announced that Yash Dabi is returning as vice president, technology growth, a newly created role that hands him charge of engineering, analytics, ai and UI/UX teams in one sweep.

The appointment is less a reshuffle than a homecoming with a mandate. Dabi cut his teeth at 22feet between 2015 and 2019, running social-first and experience-led campaigns for a wide roster of brands. He then moved through Spring Marketing Capital before striking out on his own with Knari Global, a venture he grew tenfold, a detail the agency is keen to flag as proof he can scale things, not just design them. That mix of agency pedigree and founder grit is precisely what 22feet seems to be buying back.

The brief he inherits is broader than most technology hires get. Rather than sitting in a back-office function, Dabi will sit astride creative and client delivery, tasked with making AI and technology, in his own words, “a natural part of how we think, create and solve business problems.” Shikha Davessar, managing partner at 22feet, was equally direct about the intent behind the hire, calling it a deliberate move to help clients extract real business outcomes from technology, not just polish.

That framing matters. Agencies across the Omnicom network, and rivals besides, have spent two years bolting AI tools onto existing workflows with mixed results. What 22feet appears to want is someone who has already lived the growth-through-technology arc rather than theorised it. Dabi’s résumé backs that up: campaigns for Fastrack’s Never Have I Ever, PUMA’s Do You and Suede Gully, the launch of One8, and digital transformation work for OZiva, 1mg, Wakefit and Levi’s give him range across categories that rarely sit under one desk.

For 22feet, the calculation looks straightforward. Clients are asking agencies to prove technology chops, not just creative flair, and the agency is betting that a leader who has built, scaled and sold a business of his own will move faster than a conventional technology head might. If the bet pays off, 22feet gets a credible answer to the question every client now asks first: what can you actually do with AI, beyond the pitch deck.