Dentsu India has gone through a lot of churning in the last year. Be it exits, elevations, restructuring or new appointments, the agency has been in news consistently since the beginning of the pandemic. One of the first things to hit the agency was the crisis around its acquired events company Fountainhead, which had to shut shop in as early as March 2020. Post this, the group remained in news either to announce a new appointment or an exit. Let’s take a look at the agency’s journey in the pandemic year.
The Exits
The group has seen spates of exits in the last few months. The first bigwig to step down was Agnello Dias, co-founder and chief creative officer of Taproot Dentsu. Dias initially announced that he will continue to be a consultant for key brands, but within few months made a full exit.
However, the exits became rampant in the last two weeks with back-to-back resignations of senior leaders like iProspect’s chief executive officer (CEO) Rubeena Singh; Dentsu Performance Group’s CEO Vivek Bhargava; and CEO of Dentsu programmatic, and chief data officer of Dentsu Asia Pacific Gautam Mehra.
The exits became bigger with every passing day. Next in line were Dentsu India’s CEO Anand Bhadkamkar, and Shamsuddin Jasani, group managing director of Isobar South Asia.
Amidst these, began rumours of Ashish Bhasin, CEO APAC and Chairman India, Dentsu International going for early retirement. Some even suggested a possibility of Haresh Nayak, President, Posterscope APAC and COO, Dentsu International, Media Brands, Group MD, Posterscope South Asia stepping down soon. However, both, when contacted by exchange4media, vehemently denied the rumours.
Later reacting to another report, Bhasin took to Twitter and trashed retirement rumours calling them “baseless, unverified, wrong, and untrue”.
The Structural Changes
In April 2021, the agency made some key structural changes and promoted Dentsu X India's chief executive, Divya Karani, giving her a larger South Asia role. She was elevated as the CEO for media, South Asia. Here, media includes multiple agencies including Dentsu X, Carat, iProspect and Posterscope. In this additional role, Karani became responsible for driving the global media strategy and delivery in South Asia, ensuring its alignment and relevance to the market. Besides, Kartik Iyer, erstwhile president–media brands and Amplifi, joined the network‘s market leadership team as its chief operating officer (COO). In June 2021, Amit Wadhwa was named CEO of Dentsu Creative India.
Even globally, in 2020, Dentsu announced it would cut the number of global brands from 160 to six as part of a major transformation. The company claims it has already achieved 25% of its goal of rationalising agency assets.
“'Dentsu India 2.0' will be seen as a more integrated network. The goal is to simplify the structure into three services line -- creative, media and CXM, or customer experience management,” Bhasin had told e4m in an interview early this year.
As part of this transformation, the company merged Vizeum and iProspect in March 2021.
Besides, all creative agencies were merged together. The unified agency Dentsu Creative include Dentsu India, Taproot Dentsu, Dentsu Webchutney, Perfect Relations, Isobar, WATConsult, Dentsu One and Dentsu Impact.
The New Blood
While the news of spates of exits from the group has left the industry bewildered, several promising industry leaders have joined the group in the last year.
One of the first big appointments included ex-Mindshare senior executive Anita Kotwani leaving WPP to join as CEO at Carat. The entry of Vinod Thadani as Chief Digital Growth Officer for India gave the network a big boost. Thadani also took on the additional role of Chief Executive Officer, iProspect India. The most recent big name to get associated with the group is creative veteran Ajay Gahlaut as group chief creative officer (GCCO).
Dipika Bhasin also joined Carat India as executive vice president from PHD Worldwide. Ajay Singh, a Smart City specialist, has been appointed as Vice President to spearhead the Indeed Smart City initiative and a few more.