By A Correspondent
Ajay Gahlaut, CCO and MD of Publicis Worldwide, India (PWW) has decided to move on from the agency and pursue his passion on the personal front, a communique from the agency notes. He will be with the agency until mid-August and will see through a handover to teams and clients.
The agency has also announced the elevation of Vikash Chemjong and Basabjit ‘Tito’ Mazumdar to the role of Joint National Creative Directors. The duo would take on the role of managing the creative mandate for all brands under PWW including Publicis Capital, Publicis Ambience, Publicis Beehive, Publicis Health, Publicis Emil and Publicis Business and will report to Srija Chatterjee, MD, Publicis Worldwide, India.
Said Anupriya Acharya, CEO, Publicis Groupe South Asia: “Working with Ajay has been a great experience even though our overlap has been only six months. He has built a great team here and we thank him for all his contributions. Am sure he will be successful in whatever he chooses to do next and our best wishes are with him.”
Both Chemjong and Mazumdar had joined Publicis Capital over a year ago as National Creative Directors. Over the past one year, they have been instrumental in shaping the creative universe of some key brands under Publicis Capital including Beam Suntory, GUS, GPI, Nestle, Goodricke, Emami to name a few. Prior to joining Publicis, they both were Group Creative Directors at Ogilvy India and have over four decades of creative experience between them.
Added Chatterjee: “Ajay has been a great friend and a fantastic creative leader to have around. Over his 18-month long stint, he has helped build and nurture the creative process and output for a number of brands at the agency. I wish him a great ride in his future endeavours.” On the new roles for Vikash and Tito, Chatterjee said: “We are fortunate to be running on a group philosophy that thrives on the model of collaboration and ensure that we breed and train talent of great calibre. To that end, both Vikash and Tito come with over 40+ years of combined work experience and have been successfully leading the Publicis Capital business for the last one year, partnering some of our clients in delivering some great work. I look forward to them playing a key role in raising the creative bar.”
Said Gahlaut: “For me it has been a wonderful year and a half at Publicis. I have made many friends, built a powerhouse creative team and done some nice work. The only reason for moving on is a desire to try new things. This is an extremely exciting time for all kinds of creative content in the country. I have a couple of interesting options I can explore. And while I will never say never to advertising, I thought it was a good time to attempt some things I hadn’t tried before.”
