Lodestar on a hiring spree for servicing new businesses

Lodestar is one media agency that has bagged significant amount of new business this year. The Interpublic Group agency has been on a roll since June-July this year, pocketing accounts as diverse as Shaw Wallace Distilleries, Tata Motors, Tata Indicom, Trent, TCS, Nick, IDBI, Unitech Builders, Oberoi Hotels and naukri.com.

In terms of annualised media billings, these wins amount to a figure of Rs 220 crore, says Shashi Sinha, president, Lodestar. "Our regular media billings are Rs 600 crore. So, the new business would translate to a growth of about 36-37 per cent," he says.

To cope with the influx of new business, the agency has been beefing up its team over time, and has recruited about 8-10 people in middle to senior level positions. "We are looking at some more senior-level recruitments, which should happen in a month or so," says Sinha.

Lodestar has 75 people across six offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata and Cochin. However, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai are key centres for the agency, with the other two operating as satellite offices.

Much of the recent spate of new business, incidentally, has emanated from Mumbai, while a few are from Delhi. Chennai, on the other hand, has a regular client in Henkel, which imparts stability to the agency there.

Bangalore, however, has been a bit of a laggard of the four, and Sinha is pinning his hopes on the outcome of the Titan media pitch, which was called on October 27. Lodestar along with Maxus, Starcom and Madison Media made presentations for the approximately Rs 25-crore media business of Titan Industries.

"There are still a lot more pitches that we are involved in, of which one or two are big ones," he says.

Much of the new business, reiterates Sinha, has come on the back of its planning processes, which are critical to the agency. "A lot of emphasis is given to tools and techniques that are developed at our research centre called Lodestar Labcentre."

The toolkit operates on Indian databases and is embedded in local software. "This way, it is easy to use, and clients have been seeing the benefits of it," adds Sinha.

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