Founding President & Co-Founder, PAFI

Chairperson, BCW India Group

Prema Sagar

Prema leads BCW in India as the Chairperson of the BCW India Group, which was recently formed by integrating Genesis BCW and Six Degrees BCW. Supported by the BCW India Board, Prema drives the India strategy for the Group, guiding the leadership in implementing it. An entrepreneur, an ideas person, a pioneer and a passionately creative person, Prema has led Genesis BCW since she founded it 27 years ago. Genesis BCW has since then been pushing boundaries and moving people using curiosity, vision, drive and integrity, to invent new and integrated communications products and services to meet evolving client needs.

Prema hasn’t just spearheaded the firm, she has also given the Indian public relations and communications industry some of its firsts—first to develop proprietary tools for reputation management, the first to create and put into practice service quality measurement, first to use technology in our industry, and more recently, first to develop the one-of-its-kind Live! Newsroom.

Always one to foster collaboration, Prema is the Founder-President of the Public Relations Consultants Association of India (PRCAI), an organisation that encourages the sharing of best practices in the industry. She is also the President and Founding Member of the Public Affairs Forum of India (PAFI), which was created to bring the same level of collaboration and knowledge sharing in the public affairs realm.

Recognising her impact on the industry, Prema was named PR Agency Head of the Year at PR Asia Awards 2019 and at the Campaign PR India Awards and felicitated with the Individual Achievement SABRE Award at Asia-Pacific SABRE Awards 2017. She has also been recognised by PRWeek among the most influential PR professionals as part of the Global Power Book 2016. She was named among the 50 most influential people in PR in their Asia Power List 2014 and has featured for eight consecutive years by the Impact magazine among the 50 Most Influential Women in India in the field of media, marketing and advertising. She is also on the board of the India Brand Equity Forum (IBEF). Prema was invited as the only Indian on the global jury for the first ever PR Lions at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2009. She has also been part of the jury for the Holmes Report’s SABRE Awards as well as the PRWeek Awards. She was inducted into the ‘ICCO Hall of Fame’ in October 2005, the first Asian to receive this rare honour, joining a select group of global personalities.

Inspired by Mother Teresa, Prema established Genesis Foundation, a trust created to facilitate medical treatment for critically ill, under-privileged children with congenital heart defects.