Rahul daCunha has balanced the parallel careers of advertising and theatre, and now film for over 40 years.   

He began is career at Fulcrum Advertising in 1986 working with his mentor Kersey Katrak. 
He has had extended advertising stints at Lintas India and Contract Advertising, where he created the ‘Hamara Bajaj’ campaign for Bajaj Scooters and the Shoppers Stop black and white campaign respectively. The ‘Hamara Bajaj- ‘Buland Bharat ki Buland Tasweer’ ad won Best TV commercial at the Ad Club Awards in 1989. 

The Shoppers Stop black and white print campaign won a gold at New Yorks Art Directors Awards in 1991. 

He has also worked on campaigns for Park Avenue, Finolex, Hindustan Levers and Hong Kong Bank 
Since 1993, he has been Managing Director at daCunha Communications helming the Amul Butter outdoor campaign. His team creates one Amul butter topical every two days. The campaign has run over 60 years, he has overseen the campaign for 33 years. And it has entered the Guiness Book of Records for the longest running outdoor campaign. 

For the last six years his agency partners with Rain Brand and Entertainment Solutions, working on Amul, Taj Hotels, Tata Motors, Ava Mineral Water and Kavisha Builders among others 

He runs and co-owns RAGE, a theatre company with partners Rajit Kapur and Shernaz Patel – his  plays include ‘’I’M NOT BAJIRAO’, written in 1996 which remains the longest running Indian English play, starring Boman Irani and Sudhir Joshi. In 1991 he directed ‘LARINS SAHIB’ with Tom Alter, which was India’s first play at the prestigious Edinburgh Theatre Fringe Festival. 

In 2003 he began writing his own plays with the successful ‘CLASS OF 84’ and ‘PUNE HIGHWAY’- forming his friendship trilogy along with ‘ME CASH AND CRUISE’ – ‘PUNE HIGHWAY’, starring Bugs Bhargava Krishna has travelled the world, with shows in Germany, Holland, Belgium, Malaysia, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Britain, South Korea, Dubai, and Singapore.  

In 2011, PUNE HIGHWAY travelled to London, completing a two week run at the Waterman’s Theatre in Brentford –  Columnist Yasmin Alibhai Brown, writing in the Independent, London, said of DaCunha’s writing, ‘The crude pared down English lacks compassion or grace and becomes a metaphor for India’s fast and furious globalization. It is as powerful and challenging as John Osbourne’s Look Back In Anger must have been in 1956 or Pinter’s early work. It is English again, breaking out and starting out a new trajectory in its unending history’  

In 2017, Bugs and Rahul decided to collaborate on, a wholly indigenous Indian musical which they wrote and produced, called SING INDIA SING, directed by Nadir Khan set in the world of reality TV. The musical starred singers as diverse as Uday Benegal, Brian Tellis, Siddharth Basrur and Suchitra Pillai. 

In 2025, Bugs Bhargava Krishna and Rahul wrote and directed PUNE HIGHWAY under Rahul’s new film production company, DROP D Films – the film opened in cinemas in May 2025, and had its subsequent OTT release on Amazon Prime Video in July 2025, where it moved to the no 4 position as Most Watched Film – It star Amit Sadh, Jim Sarbh, Anuvab Pal and Manjari Faddnis 

He also writes a column for Sunday Midday, called Zara Hatke.