Sujit D’Souza will be stepping into Sulina Menon’s shoes at Carat Media. Charles Berley Jenarius, Group CEO, Carat shares that D’Souza takes charge as Vice-President (North and East) with immediate effect, and would be reporting to Jenarius.
Citibank is no longer quite the king of the Indian credit card market. It has been dethroned by ICICI Bank, which now claims it has 3 million credit cards. Citibank plays catch up with 2.5 million cards. Standard Chartered Bank is in third spot, with a card base of 1.6 million, closely followed by the State Bank of India (SBI), with 1.5 million cards issued and HSBC with 0.9 million.
Dr RL Bhatia, changed management and organisation turnaround specialist, has authored his 19th book, which will be launched on 22nd January. The book, titled ‘India’s Greatest Brand Builders’, looks into various nuances that turn a marketer into a brand builder.
Hungama.com – one of South Asia’s promotions marketing companies – has announced two senior recruitments, last week. Sunil Nair joins Hungama as the Head of Planning and Nikhil Shimpi takes over as Head, Mobile Marketing.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has focused on the need to adopt a national plan to digitalise cable TV between 2006 and 2010. It should coincide with the Commonwealth Games in 2010, according to a Trai consultation paper on cable TV digitisation.
Television news channels, with foreign institutional investment, can continue to uplink from India for another three months. The channels, which are expected to benefit from the three-month extension include NDTV, CNBC, Zee News, Sab TV, Jain TV and some regional players.
The appointment of Ashish Bhasin as President, SSC&B Lintas, meant a significant amount of changes in the agency’s people structure. In the process of revamping the agency, SSC&B Lintas has decided to adopt a new corporate identity as well.
Among English news channels, in the target group CS4+ for six metros, Headlines Today had a share of 19.6 per cent in October, 21.6 per cent in November and 27.9 per cent in December. The distinct format and presentation of the channel seem to be working for it.
Benoy Roychowdhury will join HT Media Marketing Organisation as Business Head. In his new assignment, Roychowdhury will lead the development and execution of a media sales and marketing strategy and customer delight systems to support HT Media’s new business growth goals and increase leverage of geographical expansion that is currently being rolled out.
Senior advertising professional Ashish Kazanchi is joining Rediffusion DY&R as Group Creative Director effective today and he would be reporting to National Creative Director, KS Chakravarthy. With his 10-year background in advertising, Kazanchi is well known in the Delhi circle, more so for his work when he was in Publicis Delhi as Senior Creative Director.
Pantaloon Retail, a prominent player of the organised retail sector, has decided to move its media duties to Carat Media. The incumbent to the business is Insight. The account size is pegged in the region of Rs 35 to 40 crore.
After a stint of seven months, Prabhakar Mundkur has decided on his destination next. Leaving his duties as Business Development Director, JWT, he has joined Percept H as COO. Mundkur joined the organisation on January 3, 2005 and would be reporting to Rajesh Pant, CEO.
Bharat Petroleum Corporate Ltd has decided on the agencies to assign of its Rs 40-crore advertising duty. Around nine agencies were invited for the annual review and, as sources inform, the decision has gone in favour of Lowe Lintas, Saatchi & Saatchi and Euro RSCG.
Subhash Kamath, COO, Ambience Publicis, is on his way to join Bates India as CEO. Kamath would step into his new responsibilities on February 1. Nakul Chopra, President, Ambience Publicis, would take care of the responsibilities till a replacement is chosen.
“Being a fourth operator, our mindset is that of a challenger. We knew that the other three players were big, but so what? We are new and we are better. And we have to be better to counter the largeness of others. We have done well because of this approach. We had created a GSM record by getting one lakh subscribers win 30 days of our launch. Also, the first five lakh subscribers we acquired was also a record in the GSM segment because we did it in 17 months.”