Category: People

Trivago guy Abhinav Kumar joins advisory board of PaisaDukan.com

MUMBAI: Digital marketing strategist and expert Abhinav Kumar, who is also known as the Trivago guy, has joined hands with NBFC-P2P (peer-to-peer) lending marketplace PaisaDukan.com as digital marketing and branding advisor and shall also be on the company’s advisory board.

Commenting on the development, PaisaDukan founder and CMD Rajiv M Ranjan said, “Currently, PaisaDukan.com is growing at a very fast pace, and it is immensely gratifying to have a team of experts to guide us at such a crucial stage. Abhinav will be an asset for us with his vast knowledge and experience in digital marketing. Our aim is to bring digital revolution in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending industry and now with Abhinav alongside we’ll definitely realise this goal. It is our pleasure to have such a credible person on the advisory board of PaisaDukan.com.”

Abhinav Kumar said, “P2P lending has been emerged as an alternate banking option worldwide, in India, the industry is at a nascent stage. The industry needs to create awareness amongst unbanked citizens that will bring revolutionary change for the country’s financial sector. Digital marketing has played a key role in many awareness campaigns due to personalised and budget-friendly approach. I believe awareness campaign will also bring many potential investors on board.”

“I am excited to be associated with this leading peer-to-peer (P2P) lending operator in India. I believe PaisaDukan.com has a lot of potency as a brand. I am now associated to take ahead strategy based digital marketing ahead with my expertise in digital marketing,” added Kumar.

January 30, 2019
BBDO India elevates Hemant Shringy to CCO

MUMBAI: BBDO India has promoted Hemant Shringy to the chief creative officer of its Mumbai office. Prior to the promotion, he was executive creative director. Shringy will report to BBDO India chairman and chief creative officer Josy Paul.

Shringy has been working with BBD for the past seven years. He had joined the agency in 2012 as creative director and later rose up the ranks becoming the executive creative director in 2015. He has worked on some of the most powerful and effective campaigns launched over the last few years, including Touch the Pickle for P&G’s Whisper brand, eBay’s Things Don’t Judge, the Kindness is Cashless work for Visa and IDEA’s Meri Real Life, and Ariel’s Share the Load.

Shringy has also received several accolades for his work. In 2017, he was named Creative Person of the Year for South Asia in Campaign Asia’s annual Agency of the Year awards. And just this year, he was named runner-up for Asia’s Emerging Creative Leader of the Year by Campaign Brief Asia. His work has been recognised at almost all international awards shows, winning Grand Prix’s and Golds at the very best creative events including Cannes Lions, AdFest, Spikes Asia, New York Festival, the Andy’s, APAC Effies and WARC. In addition, he was a crucial member of the team that received India’s very first White Pencil at the D&AD Impact Awards.

January 29, 2019
GroupM announces new leadership structure for South Asia team and Mindshare

MUMBAI: GroupM South Asia announced a restructuring in its leadership, to continue delivering the advantages of global operations and learnings with local expertise and sharp market insights.

Effective immediately, Prasanth Kumar is named chief operating officer, South Asia, and Tushar Vyas is named president growth and transformation, South Asia, the brand new roles in the organisation.

In addition, Parthasarathy Mandayam is named Mindshare’s CEO for South Asia and Amin Lakhani is named Mindshare’s chief operating officer in South Asia.

Prasanth Kumar, who was handling the post of Mindshare CEO till now, will now be responsible for operational excellence of GroupM and will lead the teams across OpCos, trading and specialised units.

Tushar Vyas, who was responsible for the launch of digital media agency business unit (interaction) for GroupM India, in his new role will drive digital transformation and focus on building GroupM capability focusing on digital, data, analytics and content.

Speaking on the new appointments, GroupM South Asia CEO Sam Singh said, “Prasanth and Tushar are passionate leaders with high integrity and proven ability to envision and deliver successful outcomes in a challenging environment. As we become a more data-centric organisation, there is a need to drive transformation and build future capabilities with a focus on digital, data, analytics, and content. We must work across GroupM to drive organisational transformation and operational excellence. The new team structure is another step in this direction.”

He added, “I am also sad to announce that Lakshmi Narasimhan our chief growth officer for GroupM South Asia has decided to step down from his current role effective 31 January 2019, to pursue personal interests. I thank him for his contributions over the years and wish him all the best. We will miss him as we continue to build upon his hard work and passion. Lakshmi was instrumental in building our strong trading community with solid practices”.

Parthasarathy Mandayam will take over the role of chief executive officer (CEO) of Mindshare, South Asia from Prasanth, effective 1 February 2019. He has spent 10+ years with Mindshare in various leadership roles – data, insights, analytics, strategy, client leadership and business unit leadership. He will report into Sam Singh, CEO GroupM, South Asia, Prasanth Kumar – COO – GroupM South Asia and Amrita Randhawa, CEO Mindshare Asia Pacific.

Going forward, Amin Lakhani will take on the role of chief operating officer (COO) for Mindshare South Asia. Amin has over 20 years’ experience in various roles in Mindshare and GroupM and is currently leading client leadership at Mindshare.

Talking on the latest developments, the new GroupM COO Prasanth Kumar said, “Our industry is an ever-mutating one, so we have to also continue to evolve and adapt. With Maps and Amin now at the helm of Mindshare, we have leaders with a proven track record of consistently achieving clients’ business goals. They will continue cultivating client relationships at the highest level and delivering great results.”

January 25, 2019
Mullen Lintas appoints Azazul Haque, Garima Khandelwal as CCOs

MUMBAI: Mullen Lintas, announcing its new creative leadership, has named Azazul Haque and Garima Khandelwal as its new chief creative officers. While Haque joins from Ogilvy, where he was CCO-South, Khandelwal has been elevated from the executive creative director post from within the agency. The announcement closely follows Vikas Mehta’s appointment as the agency’s chief executive office.

Both of them will be based out of the agency’s Mumbai office.

Haque started his career with Lowe Lintas (then Lowe Lintas + Partners) back in 2001. Over the years that followed, he has worked with Bates, Publicis, Mudra, McCann, Contract, and Ogilvy on well-known brands like Nescafe, Coca Cola, Nestle Maggi, Domino’s Pizza, Dabur, Maruti Suzuki, Havells, Amazon, Titan and Motorola, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Auto, and Rajasthan Tourism, among others.

Khandelwal had kicked-off her career in advertising with Ogilvy Delhi approximately 18 years ago. She moved to Mullen Lintas in 2015, and her former role as executive creative director gave her an opportunity to influence the creative direction for some of India’s most celebrated brands. As the founding member of Team Mullen Lintas, she is responsible for the agency’s marquee work such as – Motilal Oswal (Equity experts), Tata Tea (Alarm bajne se pehle Jaago Re), MTV Beats, Bajaj Avenger (Feel Like God + Independence Day) and Too Yumm (National launch). Before moving to Mullen Lintas, she has also worked with Lowe Lintas where she lent her creative expertise to a diverse set of clients across categories. Some of the clients that she has been associated with include Suzlon PALS, Tata Tea (Kala Teeka), Axe (Boat Party), Liva, etc. She has also worked for Leagas Delaney, on the Skoda account for the European market, based out of Prague.

January 25, 2019
DOCOMO Digital elevates Rakshit Kapoor as global director-payment partnerships

MUMBAI: DOCOMO Digital has elevated Rakshit Kapoor as global director- payment partnerships earlier this year. He has been with DOCOMO Digital since early 2016 leading the India business.

DOCOMO Digital’s portfolio of leading-edge payments services connects digital platforms, payment providers, telecom carriers and merchants to enable secure and seamless mobile commerce at scale, while complying with all local and international regulations.

In his new role, Kapoor will be looking at developing and executing partnership strategies with financial institutions, payment methods, wallets and other technology partners across the globe. Offering a regulatory compliant robust payment solution with global reach and local payment methods to merchants globally will also be his core focus.

Prior to DOCOMO digital, he has worked with Idea Cellular as DGM marketing and at Times Internet as general manager.

He has also worked with Harmonix Productions for nine years as a director.

January 25, 2019
Arvind RP is new director of marketing, communications for McDonald’s west and south

MUMBAI: Hardcastle Restaurants Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of Westlife Development Ltd and master franchisee of McDonald’s restaurants in West and South India, has announced the appointment Arvind RP as its director-marketing and communications . He has been trusted with the responsibility of leading the overall marketing and communications strategy for brand, to further strengthen its leadership in the QSR space.

Prior to this, Arvind was working with Kaya Ltd as the head of marketing and analytics for the past six years.

An alumnus of Bharathidasan Institute of Management, Trichy, Arvind has completed various executive education programs from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, as well.

He has over 18 years of experience in marketing and sales and Arvind has worked across geographies and categories including retail (Levi Strauss), consumer goods (Britannia), and automobiles (TVS Motor Company).

January 24, 2019
Marico India appoints Koshy George as CMO

MUMBAI: Marico Ltd has appointed Koshy George as chief marketing officer, Marico India. In his new role, George will be responsible for leading the brand marketing initiatives of the company. He will report to Saugata Gupta, MD and CEO and will be a part of Marico’s executive committee.

Commenting on the appointment, Gupta said, “I am very happy to welcome back Koshy to the Marico family. He brings in a good mix of deep understanding of consumers and markets in categories similar to ours. I am confident that he will be a great fit to Marico’s empowering and collaborative work culture. He has a very exciting and challenging agenda in driving premiumisation of our portfolio over the next few years.”

Koshy George brings with him more than 17 years of sales and marketing experience across diverse categories such as personal care, home care, and foods. He started his career with Marico India in 2001 as a management trainee and was an area sales manager before moving to Hindustan Unilever. His most recent role was global marketing director – skin cleansing. During his tenure with Unilever, Koshy has worked across building and transforming various brands and categories.

January 23, 2019
iProspect India strengthens creative team with two new hires

MUMBAI: iProspect India, the digital performance agency from Dentsu Aegis Network has announced two new additions to its creative team; Bobby Thomas and Dhanesh MS, both of whom will join as creative directors.

Based out of Bangalore, Bobby and Dhanesh will report to iProspect India VP—South Krishna Kumar Revanur.

Bobby, who has worked with agencies such as Ogilvy and McCann Worldgroup, has over 13 years of experience in advertising. He has worked across a variety of brands including TVS, BharatBenz, Suzuki, Britannia, ITC, Indiamart, Tata Teleservices, Myntra, Jabong, Infosys, Lenovo, IBM, and Ola amongst others.

On joining iProspect India as creative director—south, Bobby Thomas said, “iProspect is digitally evolved and it caters to market leaders in the digital space. My stint here will help me further enhance my talent in digital as I foresee a great deal of opportunities coming my way.”

With a career spanning over 14 years, Dhanesh started his career with FCB Ulka, Cochin. He has worked with Ogilvy, Grey Worldwide, RK Swamy BBDO, Star,k and Method Advertising.

On joining iProspect India, Dhanesh MS, creative director – south said, “The digital marketing world has evolved to a point where brands have realised that optimising customer experiences in a manner that is relevant to them with an unwavering focus on ROI is probably the only way to succeed in today’s overcrowded marketplace. I am excited to be a part of iProspect India because as an organisation, we too practice this mantra to stay ahead of the curve.”

Commenting on the new appointments, iProspect India CEO Rubeena Singh said, “At iProspect, we are focused on building experiences through data and insights, optimised on performance. Dhanesh and Bobby will further drive iProspect’s capabilities of ‘data-driven creative’ as we want to give our clients a holistic solution.”

January 23, 2019
Rishi Vasudev to head Myntra-Jabong fashion and lifestyle division

MUMBAI: Just a week after naming Amar Nagaram as the head of Myntra-Jabong, Flipkart has now promoted its fashion department head Rishi Vasudev to handle the additional responsibility of the fashion and lifestyle categories of its fashion portals Myntra and Jabong. Earlier this month, Vasudev was promoted as senior vice president.

While Nagaram will now be heading the product, tech, and customer experience, Vasudev will be overseeing the fashion and lifestyle at Myntra and Jabong. Both of them will be reporting to Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy.

Prior joining Flipkart, Vasudev was appointed with Calvin Klien in India as CEO. He is the third Flipkart executive, following Ayyappan R and Nagaram to have been given responsibilities in Myntra and Jabong since Walmart acquired the company in August last year.

January 22, 2019
Ogilvy announces new APAC creative leadership team

MUMBAI: Ogilvy has announced the names of its new capability leadership team in the Asia-Pacific region as a next step in the agency’s transformation journey.

While Giri Jadhav has been announced as the head of advertising in Asia, Sheilen Rathod is taking on the leadership of Ogilvy’s customer experience and commerce capabilities across the region. Ali Kazmi will head Ogilvy’s partnerships in Asia – an extension of his current role in China. Andrew Thomas will be taking on an increased role in developing Ogilvy’s PR and influence offerings in the ASEAN markets. Thomas will continue to be based in Singapore.

Jadhav, Rathod, Kazmi, and Thomas will join Ogilvy’s capability leadership already in place in the region led by Scott Kronick (PR and influence), Benoit Wiesser (brand strategy), and Jerry Smith (digital transformation).

Jadhav is a long-term Ogilvy veteran who started with the network in India and has held various regional positions based out of Singapore – most recently heading the agency’s global client portfolio in the region. Rathod is also an Ogilvy veteran, who has previously worked in Hong Kong before moving to his current posting in China. He now takes on this regional position based in Shanghai.

January 21, 2019