MxMIndia

Tag: Gowthaman Ragothaman

  • Addressing the existing absence of ad delivery verification tools for the OOH space, foodpanda will benefit from increased end-to-end visibility of campaign performance

    Aqilliz partners Moving Walls to create DOOH campaign for foodpanda

    By A Correspondent

     

    Aqilliz has partnered with Moving Walls to facilitate a blockchain-powered Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) advertising pilot for mobile food delivery player Foodpanda.

     

    Said Srikanth Ramachandran, Founder and Group CEO of Moving Walls: “For far too long, OOH has existed without an independent means of verifying ad delivery. As an industry, we tend to point at online ad fraud to advocate for greater OOH spends but there are more fundamental issues of fragmentation and a lack of transparency that need to be fixed. This campaign gives us the exciting opportunity to implement emerging technologies in order to solve these long-standing infrastructural problems to the benefit of all participating partners across the OOH supply chain.”

     

    With the use of the Zilliqa blockchain, the campaign will leverage smart contracts to provide a reliable, transparent ledger for media owners and buyers to verify the delivery of promised spots and impressions.

     

    Added Gowthaman Ragothaman, CEO of Aqilliz: “The OOH space is already much more fragmented than digital advertising and a lot of work is needed to better optimise and streamline existing infrastructures. This pilot with Moving Walls can help to demonstrate the potential of blockchain as a viable solution to address such issues in the OOH space. As a fully viewable, immutable ledger of transactions, blockchain can foster greater trust between stakeholders, be it media owners, buyers, and solutions providers, effectively repositioning OOH investments as more transparent and accountable.”

     

    Said Hasnain Babrawala, APAC Head of Marketing, Offline Channels, for Foodpanda emphasised the brand’s commitment to accountable media spends: “As we rapidly expand across key global markets, OOH has been a major channel we leverage to consistently stay top-of-mind for our consumer base. As we embark on this campaign, we’re excited to see what benefits blockchain can bring by way of providing a real-time, independent view of OOH ad delivery in order for us to better strategically plan our marketing expenditure.”

     

     

  • Dayal previously drove strategy and innovation at Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, and McKinsey

    Aqilliz appoints Prateek Dayal as CSO

    By A Correspondent

     

    Aqilliz, the Gowthaman Ragothaman-led blockchain for marketing solutions provider, announced the appointment of ex-HSBC APAC Innovation SVP, Prateek Dayal as Chief Strategy Officer (CSO). With a wealth of experience across the financial services sector including Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays Bank and McKinsey & Company. Dayal will lead the Aqilliz team in driving the adoption of blockchain and emerging technologies within the marketing sector.

     

    Said Dayal, said: “Helping to solve real-world problems that are affecting an array of industries while working hand-in-hand with a world-class team, is something that I am genuinely looking forward to. The marketing industry has evolved in leaps and bounds in the past number of years, but the resulting complexity now presents the ecosystem with a lack of transparency, trust and convenience. These key problems can and will be addressed, it is just a matter of expertise and innovation, which is exactly what we at Aqilliz are offering.”

     

     

  • The former Mindshare and GroupM big boss will join as CEO at Aqilliz in October and drive blockchain in digital marketing 

    G’man goes Big on Blockchain

     

    By A Correspondent

     

    Gowthaman Ragothaman, the former Global Client Lead at WPP and popularly known in the industry as G’Man, has announced the launch of Aqilliz, a blockchain solutions provider.

     

    Notes a communique: “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. Spearheaded by a team of industry experts and experienced blockchain engineers, Aqilliz is uniquely equipped with technical capabilities, direct industry connections, and an academia-corporate understanding.”

     

    Said Gowthaman Ragothaman who will join as Chief Executive Officer at Aqilliz in October: “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,”

     

    Added Amrit Kumar, President and Chief Scientific Officer at Zilliqa: “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,”

     

    The communique shared with MxMIndia further notes: “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.”

     

    Said Max Kantelia, Co-Founder of Zilliqa and Anquan: “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.”

     

     

  • The GroupM veteran is said to be moving on, with a blockchain start-up.

    GroupM strongman G-Man quits. Blockchain startup beckons

    By A Correspondent

     

    Gowthaman Ragothaman aka G-Man

    The name’s Gowthaman Ragothaman. Better known to the world as G-Man. With or without the hyphenation. The GroupM veteran is said to be moving on, with a blockchain start-up.

    For over two decades, Ragothaman has been crunching numbers – at HTA, Mindshare, Fulcrum and then the entire agency which he led for some years until he moved to Singapore for a role specially created for him – Chief Client Officer. A few elevations later, he was tasked with leading the global mandate for FAST, converging deliveries for client performance. He was also Global Client Lead of Team PepsiCo before taking on the additional charge of Global Blockchain Solutions Lead at GroupM.

     

    A message to G-Man got us no reply, but he has messaged a few friends in the business informing them of his decision. At 50, he clearly believes the time is right to do something of his and blockchain clearly excites him.

    Yehi hai right choice, we would say, recalling the popular adline of yore of Pepsi in India, a client he served for eons.

  • Next phase will see the integration of payments to publishers and inclusion of more performance metrics in smart contracts

    Mindshare’s programmatic supply chain reconciliation drives up numbers for PepsiCo

    By A Correspondent

     

    Mindshare has reported success in providing seamless end-to-end reconciliation of the programmatic supply chain using blockchain for PepsiCo in partnership with Zilliqa Research, Rubicon Project, MediaMath and Integral Ad Science.

     

    The test ran in March 2019 in Asia Pacific with control versus test budget to measure its benefits. Mindshare, notes a communique, observed up to 28 per cent increased efficiency in terms of costs for viewable impressions, in running the campaign through smart contracts, versus one without.

     

    Said Gowthaman Ragothaman, Global Lead for blockchain across GroupM: “The impact on marketing budgets and the performance brings great value to the advertiser. We will expand the alliance and keep developing more features on the smart contracts to include more media performance metrics to make it even more effective.”

     

    Commenting on the results, Farida Shakhshir, Director of Consumer Engagement for PepsiCo AMENA said: “We are happy to be partnering with Mindshare to test the application and value add of blockchain in media. It is key that we stay abreast of new technologies, and continue to advance transparency, viewability, brand safety and buying efficiency. The results are encouraging, and we plan to run a few more campaigns under different conditions to verify more hypotheses and measure overall impact.”

     

    Added Erich Wasserman, co-founder and head of strategic business development at MediaMath: “We are delighted by this partnership as it matures solutions that further the promises of transparency and performance in programmatic marketing. We look forward to growing the addressable data and media supply chain that can take full advantage of the powerful optimization tools that buy-side platforms afford advertisers.”

     

    Said Max Kantelia, Co-Founder of Zilliqa Research: “We are proud to work with Mindshare and other leaders and influencers within the global media landscape. This alliance illustrates the power of smart contracts and serves as a reminder that blockchain can drive business benefits to industries beyond just finance. As Project Proton unfolds, we eagerly await to assess its impact and how we could – along with Mindshare’s expertise and insights – develop it on our scalable and secure platform.”

     

     

  • If advertising has to subsidise the system of free internet, then will the access of free internet in any public place be automatically denied to any platform with an ad blocking tool, asks Indrani Sen

    Indrani Sen: The Missing Elephant

    By Indrani Sen

    Yesterday, Gowthaman Ragothaman or GMan (as we all call him) posted on the Facebook: “Digital Platforms still requiring advertising revenues to invest in technology that eventually disintermediates advertising. This is the biggest paradox in marketing today. Very soon these two forces will be at cross-purposes and from it will emerge the “subscription” model from the current “subsidy” model”. The post generated some thoughtful comments to which GMan replied that in the futuristic “subscription model”, we will subscribe for advertising –as in – willing to know more about a brand or a category. Ranjan Kapur applauded GMan saying that “We will have arrived the day people subscribe for brand communication. It is a distinct possibility and you are going to be in a position to make it happen.”

     

    Ashish Karnad added to the discussion by saying: “My take is that the subscription and advertising models will co-exist just like it does in television today”.  I responded to Ashish: “In traditional media, consumers do not have to pay for reading or viewing advertisements, the cover price of newspapers, subscription of cable or dish TV includes the cost of all types of content apart from the consumers’ time cost… Agree that as long as the consumers do not have to pay for the internet access cost, digital advertising will not have any handicap”.  I simply loved Gman’s reply to my comment:“This is the missing elephant everybody is playing around with!”

     

    The above chat on Facebook based on Gman’s post summarises our concern about the future of advertising in the world of digital media.  Yesterday, I also read an interesting article by Lucy Handley on www.cnbc.com (courtesy etbrandequity.com) titled: “Is Advertising Over? What the chief marketers are saying about the future of marketing” suggesting that “there are clear signs of nervousness among big business and recognition that ads can be super annoying.”  (http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/26/is-advertising-over-what-chief-marketers-are-saying-about-the-future.html).

     

    The article referred to a report published earlier this month byForrester Research: “The end of advertising as we know it.”Forrester’s research suggests that 38 percent of U.S. adults who use the internet have installed an adblocker, and 50 percent claim to actively avoid ads on websites.Co-author James McQuivey has suggested that in future,digital assistants will replace Google search, and bots will become digital slaves who at their masters’ commands will scrape and remove stuff people don’t care about, including advertising before presenting people’s social media and other internet feeds back to them.

     

    The same article quotes Keith Weed, Chief Marketing Officer at Unilever saying: “Adblocking is a hugely hot topic… There has always been adblocking. Adblocking was the 30-second TV ad coming on air and you got up to make a cup of tea. That was real physical ad avoidance and what did we try to stop that happening is to create more engaging advertising…There is a huge fragmentation and clutter out there in advertising absolutely, and so people have more choice and I totally agree [that] this idea of the attention economy, of course people have choice, they can switch around more, and hence if we as advertisers don’t show great advertising, people switch around more.”

     

    We need to find out if people are using adblockers because they do not like the quality of the advertisements or they want to save the cost they are paying for accessing advertisement on the internet. If the consumers have free access to internet, will they still be using adblockers? This is the “Missing Elephant” that we are playing around with without knowing who will bear the huge cost of installing the free internet network in public places and who will maintain them.

     

    If advertising has to subsidise the system of free internet, then will the access of free internet in any public place be automatically denied to any platform with an ad blocking tool? The “subsidy” and “subscription” models of internet can co-exist in future with the first model based on free access to internet with an in-built mechanism of rejecting access to all mobiles, tablet, laptops etc. with adblocking devices and the second model based on subscription to the internet and digital content including selective information about a brand or a category.  We need to find the “Missing Elephant” before investing in creating great advertisements as once the consumers decide to block the ads, they will not be able to judge how good or bad the advertisements are.

     

    Indrani Sen is a media services veteran, having worked with JWT, later Mindshare and then with Emami. In recent years, she is an independent consultant and academic. She is Adjunct Professor in charge of the Media Management programme at the Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication, Pune. The views expressed here are her own.

     

  • Gowthaman Ragothaman moves to the role of Global Chief Strategy Officer for FAST from his current Mindshare APAC Chief Operating Officer

    G-Man goes Fast Forward in a global strategy role

    By A Correspondent

     

    Gowthaman Ragothaman

    In all the hullabaloo of the news channels taking on BARC, we didn’t flash this news early enough (note: we’ve resisted playing with the word Fast so far), but it does gladden our hearts to note that our man G-Man is going places. The Mindshare APAC Chief Operating Officer now assumes the role of Global Chief Strategy Officer for FAST. G-Man for those who don’t know is short for Gowthaman Ragothaman, the affable former chief of Mindshare India (until end-2011).

     

    Mindshare, the global media agency that is part of WPP, is placing its FAST (short for Future Adaptive Specialist Team) integrated performance unitat the heart of its business as part of an ongoing transformation programme evolving the agency into an Adaptive Marketing organisation…to help clients do the same.

     

    Norm Johnston

    Norm Johnston, formerly Mindshare Global Chief Strategy and Digital Officer, assumes the dual role of Global Chief Digital Officer Mindshare and Global CEO of FAST as part of the move.

     

    Other appointments to the FAST leadership team include: Gowthaman Ragothaman of course,Barry Lee, currently head of the London-based Mindshare Worldwide FAST Hub, who adds the additional role of Chief Product Officer for FAST; Tom Johnson, currently Performance Marketing Director at Mindshare Worldwide, who takes the role of Chief Client Officer for FAST; Adam Ray, formerly Global Head of Programmatic at Mindshare Worldwide, who assumes the role of Chief Innovation Officer for FAST.

     

    The global FAST team will be supported by the regional FAST Hub leaders: Robin Wong (APAC), Matias Galimberti (LATAM) andBrian Decicco (NA).

     

    Said Nick Emery, Mindshare Global CEO: “Clients need us to marry our abilities in brand building and outcome based performance marketing. FAST has been a key part of our overall integrated offer to clients and with Norm’s leadership team we are looking forward to helping our clients achieve greater success. There is much more to come on our transformation journey.”

     

    Added Norm Johnston, Mindshare Worldwide Chief Digital Officer and CEO of FAST: “We believe that modern Adaptive Marketers need to be experts in both brand and performance marketing and that only by offering an integrated approach will we truly achieve success for our clients, making their messaging relevant, timely and targeted whether it is brand or demand in nature. That is why FAST sits at the heart of an integrated Mindshare offering, not as an external agency.”

     

  • On Day3 of Cannes Lions 2016, Indian agencies score big with a Grand Prix and 2 Golds in Glass and more!

    It’s a Grand Prix for Mindshare!

     

    By A Correspondent

     

    It’s been happy days for the Indian contingent at Cannes.

     

    Some rich pickings in the awards that were presented on Monday evening, the second day of the International Festival of Creativity, better known as the Cannes Lions.

     

    After Medulla being crowned the ‘Healthcare Agency of the Year’ on Day 1, Day 3 saw really rich pickings for India, even though there may have been some disappointments for a few favourites.

     

    Mindshare India bagged the Grand Prix for Glass Lions for ‘The 6-Pack Band’, a branded content campaign for Hindustan Unilever’s Brooke Bond Red Label tea.

     

    This is the second consecutive year where an Indian agency has won a Grand Prix in the Glass Lions. Last year, it was BBDO India for Touch the Pickle. The award was picked up by Ashutosh Srivastava and Gowthaman Ragothaman as Mindshare South Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar was in Mumbai.

     

    Meanwhile, BBDO India and Ogilvy bagged Gold at Glass Lions for their works ‘Ariel Matic – Dad, SharetheLoad’ and ‘Make Love Not Scars – Beauty Tips by Reshma’ respectively.

     

    Earlier in the evening, in Radio Lions, L&K Saatchi & Saatchi was awarded two Silvers for Thomas Cook and Contract Advertising won a Bronze for Nokia in the same category. In Print & Publishing, JWT won a Bronze for its Sleep Apnoea campaign. In Promo & Activation, Leo Burnett India brought home a Bronze Lion for Bajaj V.

     

  • Mindshare scored high on Vitality and Structure. All GroupM agencies made it to the list of the Top 10 agencies in India

    Mindshare is #1 as per latest RECMA ratings

    By A Correspondent

     

    Leading marketing services agency Mindshare emerged as the No 1 media agency in India as per RECMA’s latest qualitative assessment for all leading media agencies in India. Mindshare has scored high on the parameters of Client Profile, Momentum, Competitive Pitches and Resources to emerge as the leading agency in India.

     

    Said Ashutosh Srivastava, Chairman, Emerging Markets at Mindshare: “I’m pleased to see this endorsement from RECMA for the agency’s position in India. Mindshare continues to be at the leading edge there – in harnessing data to power more creativity and innovative use of media platforms for marketers, and bringing to life its proposition of Adaptive Marketing”.

     

    Gowthaman Ragothaman, Chief Operating Officer, Mindshare Asia Pacific added, “I am particularly satisfied with the recognition on structure and vitality. We continuously re-engineer our teams in line with the changing demands from our clients as well as the media and marketing landscape. Our suite of services now reflect a full-fledged marketing communications company”

     

    Speaking on the new ratings by RECMA, Prasanth Kumar, CEO, Mindshare South Asia said, “This is a win for each and every member of the Mindshare team. Mindshare has always been the leader in innovation, and we believe it is extremely vital for us to prepare ourselves and our clients for a relevant tomorrow. With our adaptive marketing philosophy, we have ensured our clients have the competitive advantage, and their communication is superlative. We are grateful for their belief in us, to deliver on our common goals of brand building. We are proud of the fact that our clients continue to work with us on initiatives that are continuously pushing the boundaries of media investment and communication, as we successfully redefine the media industry in India.”

     

    The RECMA country Qualitative Evaluations offer an extensive and up-to-date assessment of the media agencies based on a set of performances indicators.

     

  • He was Marketing Head and part of the start-up team for Danone India and also spent nearly 15 years with JWT India at its flagship Mumbai office working with Unilever and other key clients

    Varun Channa is MD, Mindshare Malaysia

    Varun Channa

    By A Correspondent

     

    Mindshare APAC, the global media agency network part of WPP, has appointed Varun Channa, to the role of Managing Director, Mindshare Malaysia.  He joins Mindshare after six years with Danone Indonesia, where he helped to turn around their fresh dairy business and developed the roadmap for their Isotonics. Prior to that, he was Marketing Head and part of the start-up team for Danone India and also spent nearly 15 years with JWT India at its flagship Mumbai office working with Unilever and other key clients.

     

    Gowthaman Ragothaman

    Commenting on the appointment, Gowthaman Ragothaman, COO of Mindshare Asia Pacific, said:  “We are totally delighted to welcome Varun on board, who brings a wealth of experience across industries and markets. This is the beginning of a new chapter in the whole new world of connected media, where content, creativity and consumer data in the Malaysian market is at the centre of all activities and importance. “ Adding on to this, Girish Menon, CEO, GroupM Malaysia said: “With Varun, we have hit upon a fantastic combination – with JWT, he honed his skills in developing communications solutions for some iconic global brands and then as a tech-savvy marketer with Danone in tree different fast-growing, competitive markets, he got his hands dirty developing marketing solutions to deliver strong business results. I believe these are the combination of skills and experiences that our clients increasingly expect from the head of their agency, so I am confident that Varun will lead Mindshare to even greater success!”

     

    Commenting on his appointment, Mr Channa said: “It’s a pleasure to be part of Mindshare Malaysia in these exciting times when media is playing a even greater role in growing our clients’ business. Seeing the pipeline of innovative digital solutions we have, I look forward to us adding greater value to our clients’ business.” Mr Channa takes over the role from Gerald Wittenberger, who returned to Europe at the end of 2014.

     

  • Gowthaman Ragothaman (better known as GMan), COO of Mindshare Asia Pacific, speaks on the priorities ahead of Mindshare South Asia’s CEO-designate Prasanth Kumar

    Structure, Talent and Innovation are action points for PK at Mindshare, says GMan. Exclusive to MxM

    Gowthaman Ragothaman

    Given that both CVL Srinivas, CEO GroupM South Asia and Prasanth ‘PK’ Kumar, Managing Partner, Central Trading Group, GroupM South Asia and CEO-designate Mindshare South Asia were busy with the presentation of the ‘This Year Next Year’ report, they preferred to not speak on the latter’s appointment to the top job. But since PK will also report into Gowthaman Ragothaman (better known as GMan), COO of Mindshare Asia Pacific, Pradyuman Maheshwari spoke to GMan in Singapore and requested him to respond to a few questions via email.

     

    It’s been three years since you moved out from direct responsibility of South Asia. From a regional perspective, what are the broad challenges facing the India office?

    We have to treat India/South Asia as a region. No other market/office in the world has so many offices. We have Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Lahore, Dhaka and Colombo. While all other markets are structured for a “one office leadership”, as we have expanded and grown across offices, our “speed to market” was significantly tested in the last few years – this is an internal dynamic. As an industry, I realised, when I moved out into the region, India is very inclusive and try to do/invent all things inside when a lot of best practice can be just replicated or brought into the country. I also realised that the talent drain from India to the region, has sort of depleted some good quality talent in the country. So Structure, Talent and Innovation – are the three broad challenges.

     

    Prasanth Kumar is a seasoned GroupM hand. What are the specific targets you have for him?

    Pretty much the above 3 points. And you will see some of these happening quite fast and quick.

     

    In your statement on PK’s appointment, you speak about getting leadership talent from within the group. But, don’t you think that for achieving something out-of-the-box or hat ke, as they say in India, you need to bring in talent from the outside?

    Totally agree with you. We continue to diversify out talent pool at all levels – and the constant churn in the industry helps us to manage this, especially when you flip it as an opportunity instead of a problem. Almost all the recruitments we have made in Mindshare in the past 2-3 years are external talent. And at the same time, if you look at the challenges that I have mentioned in the first point, our considered view is to groom local talent to leadership positions as they come with tremendous insights of the organisational issues. It is  a considered choice…but not necessarily a permanent choice for all the times.

     

  • Mindshare appoints Prasanth Kumar as CEO, South Asia to take over Ravi Rao who is rumoured to be moving to sandier pastures

    It’s PK as the new Mindshare South Asia boss!

     

    By A Correspondent

     

    The poster of the Aamir Khan film PK was the first thing that came to our minds when one of the A&M media’s favourite sources alerted us of the winds of change that were blowing across the GroupM South Asia headquarters in North Mumbai.

     

    Expectedly, the otherwise very responsive dramatis personae clammed up. Calls and text messages received no reply. Whatsapp messages got those two blue ticks, but not even the ‘typing’ indicator in response. But while we were sure of the news, we couldn’t carry it without a confirmation. So it waited from Wednesday to Thursday to the weekend.

     

    There were also other things that were also grabbing our attention.

     

    Prasanth Kumar
    Ravi Rao

    And then on Sunday evening, our inbox alert beeped. The message curiously asked us to embargo the news till 9pm. The news confirmed our earlier info: Leading media agency network Mindshare has appointed Prasanth Kumar as CEO, South Asia. He will take charge with effect from March 1, 2015. Ravi Rao, who is currently CEO, will be transitioning into a new role within GroupM, the details of which are to be announced soon.

     

    So where’s Ravi Rao going? Back to the Gulf, we were told. If not within the fold, outside of it. The communiqué says he will transition to a new role within GroupM, but which clearly means negotiations are still on.

     

    CVL Srinivas
    Gowthaman Ragothaman

    Kumar or PK, as he’s known in the fraternity, is currently Head of WPP-owned GroupM’s Central Trading Group and a member of the South Asia Executive Committee. As Mindshare South Asia leader, he will report into CVL Srinivas, CEO GroupM South Asia and Gowthaman Ragothaman, COO of Mindshare Asia Pacific. And who takes over from him, we asked the GroupM spokesperson. There are no names yet, but last year Jai Lala and Sidharth Parashar were elevated in the CTG team.

     

    Meanwhile, this is what Srinivas on the announcement: “Prasanth was a unanimous choice for this role.  In the past 10 years, he has played a stellar role in ensuring GroupM’s scale is leveraged to maximise value for our clients. I’d like to thank Ravi Rao for his contribution and wish him the very best in his new role within the network.”

     

    And here’s what Ragothaman (better known as GMan) commented on the change: “Ravi has done a fantastic job in growing our business in India in the last three years. India is at the inflexion point on digital, content, analytics, e-commerce and measurement and in Prasanth we have a seasoned veteran to lead Mindshare to the next level. And I am particularly happy that we continue to groom and grow talent from our larger GroupM ecosystem with diverse talent and experience to leadership positions, which speaks highly about our talent in the market place. In the past 10 years Prasanth Kumar has done a tremendous job scaling up GroupM’s CTG practice in South Asia, and developing strategic partnerships for GroupM that contribute to the successes of all GroupM agencies.”

     

    Big Story image inspired by poster of the Raj Kumar Hirani film PK. Imaging by Rafiq, Poster courtesy: PK, the film, poster