Madison HiveMinds has picked up Nike’s e-commerce media mandate in India, an account industry sources peg at ₹10-12 crore. The agency will run digital media strategy and execution for the sportswear giant’s online commerce business.
On paper, it’s another agency win. Look closer and it’s a neat snapshot of where brand budgets in India are actually moving: away from generic awareness spend and toward media that sits close to the buy button.
What the mandate actually covers
HiveMinds will drive Nike’s e-commerce business through digital media, owning both the strategy and the execution around the brand’s online commerce push. The agency’s stack spans search, social, programmatic, analytics and e-commerce — which is precisely the toolkit a marketplace-led business needs.
The timing is the interesting part. In February 2026, Nykaa Fashion announced a strategic partnership with Nike to operate Nike.in and the Nike Commerce App, covering digital marketing, fulfilment and customer experience. The HiveMinds appointment slots into that same digital-first architecture.
Backed by a bigger, well-funded push
Nike’s global marketing investment is expected to cross $5 billion in 2026, up from $4.68 billion in fiscal 2025, per LSEG data cited by Reuters — a war chest aimed at holding ground against fast-rising challengers such as On and Hoka.
So an India e-commerce mandate isn’t a side project. It’s a regional node in a global spend surge, and India’s marketplace-heavy retail structure makes it one of the more media-intensive markets to win.
Why this matters for growth teams
Three signals worth reading if you sell online in India:
- Commerce media is becoming its own line item. Brands are carving out e-commerce mandates separate from mainline creative and brand media, with dedicated partners and dedicated P&Ls.
- Platform partnerships are replacing DIY D2C. Nike handing the .in experience to a partner like Nykaa Fashion shows even global giants would rather rent proven commerce infrastructure than build and staff it.
- Full-funnel fluency wins pitches. Agencies that can move between storytelling and conversion are taking share from pure-play specialists on both sides.
The HiveMinds momentum story
HiveMinds became a wholly owned subsidiary of Madison World in 2025, after Madison bought out the remaining stake; the agency first joined the group in 2017. Under founder Jyothirmayee JT it scaled more than tenfold, and it now grows under CEO Deepti Bhadauria, appointed as part of Madison’s wider effort to fuse brand-building with performance marketing.
Adding a global name like Nike does two things for an agency: it validates the commerce capability to future prospects, and it forces internal rigour, because marketplace accounts get judged on numbers weekly, not on decks quarterly.
Your takeaway checklist
If you’re a D2C founder or a growth lead watching this play out, borrow the structure rather than the budget:
1. Split your media by intent, not by channel. Brand media and commerce media need different KPIs, different creative and often different owners.
2. Treat marketplaces as media, not just distribution. Retail media ad spend on Indian marketplaces is a demand-generation lever, not a listing fee.
3. Audit your owned commerce stack. If your own site is the weakest link between an ad click and a delivered order, no amount of media efficiency will fix the funnel.
4. Hire or brief for both halves. The agencies winning big mandates right now are the ones that can write a story and read a cohort chart in the same meeting.
Expect more of these commerce-specific mandates to be split out over the next few quarters. The brands doing it first are the ones treating e-commerce as a media business with inventory attached.
Source: Indian Advertising Media & Marketing News – exchange4media
