Meet Merchant remembers the moment he decided to take the leap. After years of growing through the ranks at Oberoi Realty, he felt the familiar tug of a new challenge calling him forward. Nearly a year later, he looks back at that decision with a quiet sense of certainty. The move to Peninsula Land Ltd didn’t just reshape his career path; it placed him at the heart of a company preparing to reinvent itself.
The last year at Peninsula Land has unfolded during a crucial phase for the business. The real estate developer, known for its legacy projects and long-standing presence in the market, is in the middle of a strategic rebuild. Merchant entered the picture at a time when the company was ready to strengthen its brand, modernise its processes and re-energise its market presence. His mandate: bring together marketing and channel sales in a way that feels cohesive and forward-looking.
His role comes with a dual lens. On the one side is brand leadership. Merchant is responsible for shaping a refreshed narrative for Peninsula Land, ensuring the brand speaks with clarity across every touchpoint. That involves product launches, integrated campaigns and finding the right balance between digital and traditional mediums. Real estate buyers today research, compare and analyse long before a site visit, and Merchant knows that the brand has to meet them exactly where they are.
The other side of his mandate is channel sales, a segment that sits at the backbone of any real estate business. Merchant has spent the last year strengthening relationships with channel partners, understanding their challenges and helping them align better with the company’s strategy. A strong partner ecosystem, he says, isn’t just about closing deals faster. It is about building trust, creating consistency and ensuring buyers receive the same experience from the first phone call to the final handover.
Both roles feed into a larger ambition: aligning the marketing funnel with sales outcomes to fuel revenue growth. Peninsula Land is navigating a phase where growth needs to be steady, meaningful and future-ready. Merchant’s job is to ensure the storytelling is compelling, the partnerships are robust and the brand occupies a sharper place in the minds of buyers.
What makes his journey interesting is the breadth of industries he has crossed to reach this point. From telecom and BFSI to some of India’s most competitive real estate environments, Merchant has collected a mix of skills that travel well across sectors. Over nine years, he has built a reputation as someone who brings structure, strategy and a certain creative restlessness to every assignment. He speaks often about user experience, technology and data, not as buzzwords but as the everyday tools of a modern marketer.
The recognition he received recently — including CMO Asia’s Most Influential Marketer and Brand Impact & Digital Marketer of the Year — reflects that evolving skill set. Awards aren’t the end goal, he admits, but they help mark the journey. They also remind him that marketing, at its core, is still about persuasion, clarity and the ability to make an idea resonate.
At Peninsula Land, he sees an opportunity to build something meaningful. A company in transition offers room to experiment and rethink what is possible. Merchant plans to use that space to shape a more contemporary brand language, strengthen the pipeline between marketing and sales, and support the company’s larger expansion strategy.
For him, this isn’t just another job title. It is the chance to help write a new chapter for an organisation ready to grow again, and to do it with the kind of steady, intentional leadership the real estate sector increasingly demands.
