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Tag: Ashutosh Srivastava

  • Mindshare sets up GEMS, promotes Deepika Nikhilender as CEO

    Mindshare sets up GEMS, promotes Deepika Nikhilender as CEO

    MUMBAI: Mindshare has launched a new full service media unit in Singapore called Growth and Emerging Market Solutions or GEMS, with Deepika Nikhilender as its CEO.

    GEMS will serve the needs of a number of companies who use Singapore and other Asian cities as their central marketing hubs for managing their emerging and developing growth markets across Asia, Middle East, Africa and others. GEMS will provide marketers who have responsibility for these regions with a broad spectrum of services including emerging class consumer activation, mobile marketing, category communications planning, ROMI, digital analytics, consulting, content development and management of quick data for insights. As specific sub-regional needs from clients grow, Mindshare will look to support the GEMS Singapore hub with talent based in China, India, Middle East, Africa and other developing markets.

    GEMS provides a simplified single-window access to clients looking for specialist planning skills and implementation partners in all the areas of marketing communications described above. It will house a team of client leaders along with specialists in these service areas who will help develop solutions for clients. GEMS is designed to be an open-source partner to its clients. It will bring in bespoke planning platforms and a real-time campaign data-tracking centre, which will facilitate open-source collaboration with various marketing communications partners to develop integrated marketing solutions. These partner companies will focus on word-of-mouth, activation, insights, data analytics and technology, and digital media – like Kantar, Geometry Global, Advocacy, VML and several others. In addition, GEMS will harness global partnerships with digital and mobile companies that Mindshare already has in place.

    Deepika Nikhilender previously led Mindshare Business Planning across Asia Pacific where she led and developed Mindshare’s offering in analytics, insights, strategy and data and technology solutions. She brings extensive experience on multiple product categories across Asia. In 2010 she was chosen Regional Client Leader for Mindshare APAC as recognition of her contribution to clients. In this role, Deepika will report to R Gowthman, recently appointed COO for Mindshare APAC. Deepika has been with Mindshare for 15 years.

    Deepika said, “At Mindshare, we have always kept our clients’ business at the centre of all that we do. Their expectations from Mindshare have also changed significantly in response to the changing marketing and media opportunities. We continue to evolve ourselves to stay ahead of market, while ensuring we stay relevant and competitive. Thanks to our clients who keep pushing us to raise the bar, inspiring us to open up new streams and encouraging us in all our new initiatives.”

    Ashutosh Srivastava, Chairman & CEO for APAC & Growth Markets at Mindshare, said “GEMS is part of an exciting new approach, using technology to create centres of excellence at a few hubs, look at data centrally and share precious talent across more markets when developing solutions. Hopefully this model will enable clients to use all their partners more collaboratively – to create more impactful solutions and drive growth, in markets where lack of experienced talent is currently a huge handicap. We are going to run GEMS like a start up – data and tech driven, fast and flexible, provocative and founded on collaboration, with ability to dial up and down for clients without tying up massive resource for clients.”

    Mindshare Asia Pacific’s GEMS unit and Deepika’s role are effective immediately.

     

  • Mindshare elevates R Gowthaman and Sudipto Roy

    Mindshare elevates R Gowthaman and Sudipto Roy

    MUMBAI: In a move to strengthen its hold in market and understanding the ever-changing, technology- driven time, Mindshare has appointed R Gowthaman as chief operating officer and Sudipto Roy as regional chief client officer for Asia Pacific.

     

    Gowthaman will take on the role of COO Asia Pacific after spending a year as chief client officer, APAC and CEO south and south-east Asia. During this time, he was responsible for Mindshare’s key clients across the region and expanding the agency’s services, including the launch of an emerging market activation unit across ASEAN in partnership with Geometry Global.

     

    In his new role as COO, Gowthaman will focus on continued development and delivery of Mindshare’s services to marketers across the marketing value chain – from emerging consumer activation at one end to big data management on the other, and a more effective business model for working with clients.

     

    Gowthaman said, “I am extremely delighted to take on this role. I am especially looking forward to designing and rolling out new work streams that provide Mindshare’s clients with great new opportunities and accelerate sustainable growth of our business. Despite our scale and size, we are increasingly behaving more and more like a start-up – provocative, hungry, adaptive, full of energy all underpinned by a promise to be the agency of the future.”

     

    Roy takes over from Gowthaman as chief client officer Asia Pacific following a two-and-a-half-year stint as managing partner of Client Leadership and Partnerships. During this time, his primary responsibility was to run some of Mindshare’s key accounts including Unilever, Kimberly Clark, Lenovo and others.

     

    In his role as CCO, Roy will focus on growing Mindshare’s relationship with its key clients across Asia Pacific, by creating faster, more agile and adaptive marketing services for them.  Roy will also spearhead creation of a stronger open source collaboration model around Mindshare’s key clients, with relevant partners from WPP as well as other independent companies. Roy will report to Gowthaman in this role.

     

    Mindshare is forging a number of partnership programmes with ‘hot’ companies coming up in emerging economies, in analytics, media technology, e-commerce, B2B, social media, mobile and more, to complement the current global partnerships already in place with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Yahoo and many others. Roy’s new role focuses on leveraging some of these partnerships to help its clients’ brands be more adaptive to near real time consumer response, and continuously improve the way they use various media platforms to grow their brands.

     

    Commenting on his appointment, Roy said, “I am passionate about our clients’ businesses and how we think about them, so this move is exciting as it enables me to focus on what I really love. I believe we have a great opportunity to drive cutting-edge thinking for Mindshare and our clients, and fundamentally re-imagine how we think about media services while continually raising the standards for how media agencies can drive ROI. I really look forward to this part of the journey.”

     

    Mindshare chairman & CEO for APAC and growth market Ashutosh Srivastava said, “We are privileged to have highly talented people like Gowthaman and Roy stepping into these roles. Over the years, they have developed trusted relationships with our clients, by focusing on what they value most. These roles are incredibly crucial for us at this stage and will help Mindshare continue to lead the industry thinking, and shape its development and growth at an exciting time, where understanding of media, technology and effective data usage are becoming more and more central to brand success.”

     

    Both Roy and Gowthaman’s roles are effective immediately and will be based in Singapore.

  • Mindshare ups Gowthaman to chief client officer for Asia Pacific

    Mindshare ups Gowthaman to chief client officer for Asia Pacific

    MUMBAI: Mindshare have appointed R. Gowthaman as Chief Client Officer for the Asia Pacific region, effective 1 January 2012.

    In his previous role, Gowthaman was leading Mindshare for South Asia.

    Gowthaman will be based in Singapore and report to Mindshare APac CEO Ashutosh Srivastava. He will lead a team of regional client leaders who provide strategic direction and coordination for Mindshare’s work on key regional and global accounts across all Asia Pacific countries.

    His appointment to this new role comes at a time when Mindshare has expanded the scope of services it provides to its existing clients – especially in Marketing RoI management, research and insights, communications strategy, performance marketing, digital media, branded content creation and distribution, and newer and more innovative media trading approaches.

    Unlike the industry trend towards launching new specialist companies and silos, Mindshare has placed its strategic bets on integrated client teams featuring talent from all these streams, customised to each client’s needs. There have been a string of appointments across the region in the specialist skills areas reflecting this trend over the past few years.

    Srivastava said, “with the fusion of technology with media and the accompanying deluge of data, marketers are seeing more specialist talent and agencies involved in their business than ever before. They have to manage a far more complex ecosystem to get value from all their partners. So they see huge value in strong agency client leaders – people with sound understanding of their brands and of media & technology, who can help them facilitate more impactful and integrated marketing solutions working with various specialists. We are attracting new talent and developing broader skills amongst our key client leaders so we can do this on bigger scale. Gowthaman’s appointment is a reflection of the importance Mindshare has placed on this breed of talent.”

    GroupM CEO for South Asia Vikram Sakhuja said, “Gowthaman has done a fine job of laying the architecture of the new MindShare in India, by re-shaping the organization into one capable of delivering business planning, integrated communication solutions and robust media implementation for its Clients via highly customized offerings. In the process he has re-enforced Mindshare’s supremacy in India as being not only India’s largest Media Agency, but also the best.”

    Mindshare’s Ravi Rao will succeed Gowthaman in the position of Leader, South Asia effective 1 January 2012. In his previous role, Rao was leading the South Asian operation for Team Unilever since 2009.

    Sakhuja said, “In the last two years Ravi has run the Team Unilever operation successfully on the back of securing the business in 2010 across South Asia. Since then Team Unilever has won various awards in Content, Digital, Communication Planning across local, regional and global making it one of the crown jewels in the media world. In his new role as Leader South Asia, Ravi Rao will bring in his wealth of experience in Strategic Planning, Research, Content, Digital and forming Strategic Alliances to position Mindshare as their clients’ lead business partner in South Asia.“