GroupM's Gowthaman Ragothaman takes CEO role at blockchain firm Aqilliz

Gowthaman Ragothaman, former global client lead at WPP, has taken on the role of CEO at Aqilliz, a blockchain solutions provider.Addressing sector-specific challenges in the field of digital marketing, Aqilliz will facilitate a fairer ecosystem underwritten by greater trust, transparency and engagement. Ragothaman, the former global blockchain solutions lead at GroupM, established his career under the WPP group of companies, having worked at Mindshare for almost two decades. Aqilliz is created in collaboration with Zilliqa, a high-throughput public blockchain, which will provide the infrastructure for secure and scalable futuristic solutions for enterprise clients.Having witnessed first-hand friction points across the digital platform ecosystem, Aqilliz leverages on Zilliqa’s technical infrastructure to address three key areas: reconciliation on the digital supply chain; verification and authentication of transaction parties; and risk mitigation in costs and consumer outcomes. This ultimately ensures the fair distribution of value exchanged between advertisers, platforms, and consumers, the company said in a press statement.Zilliqa is a public blockchain designed with performance, scalability, and security in mind. The project has established key partnerships across the fields of digital advertising, financial services, payments, gaming, as well as digital entertainment. After joining forces with Mindshare in 2017, Zilliqa helped to establish Project Proton, an alliance that explores the benefits of blockchain in addressing issues in programmatic advertising. With Zilliqa as Aqilliz’s blockchain infrastructure provider, the team’s original academic research and technical aptitude will form the backbone of the highly-tailored applications being developed for real-world use.“In today’s platform economy, tech solutions are trying to address the needs of either the brands, platforms or the consumers, and not the entire platform economy as a whole. With the help of blockchain, we can address these needs equitably and in turn, unify all players in the digital marketing landscape. We’re excited to be at the forefront of this change, as we set a new industry standard that champions greater transparency, cost-efficiency, and trust. As we work together with Zilliqa, we will continue to build on the promising results seen on Project Proton,” said Gowthaman Ragothaman who will join as chief executive officer at Aqilliz in October.“Businesses often struggle with moving from awareness to implementation. Aqilliz fills the knowledge gap, identifying key areas where blockchain is well-positioned to offer far-reaching solutions that will benefit all participants of the digital marketing ecosystem. Now that Zilliqa is open-for-business, we are excited to embark on a new venture that will allow our platform to be mobilized as the entry point for enterprise adoption,” said Amrit Kumar, president and chief scientific officer at Zilliqa.Incubated and taken to market by Anquan, the Singapore-based technology group, Aqilliz equally benefits from its strong understanding of all the participants across the value chain. Aqilliz will actively collaborate with various partners in the advertising, data, marketing, technology, and analytics industries, and will be onboarding clients by the end of the year. Max Kantelia, co-founder of Zilliqa and Anquan said, “From technical milestones backed by cutting-edge research to a diverse array of promising partnerships, we are very proud of what has been achieved by Zilliqa over the past two years. By marrying technical strength and industry know-how, the collaboration with Aqilliz is poised to accelerate the mass-adoption of Zilliqa.”