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I have always looked at things beyond media: Sandip Tarkas

Tarkas, who headed the media function at Reliance ADAG, has moved to the Future Group as president, customer strategy

Sandip Tarkas has made his next move. He is now president, customer strategy, at the Future Group. He will report to Future Group CEO Kishore Biyani.

Tarkas has been a media professional for the last 12 years or so, though he is an engineer by qualification. When questioned about his move into customer strategy, he told agencyfaqs!, “I have always handled things beyond media in all my earlier jobs, so this isn’t that much of a drastic change.”

I have always looked at things beyond media: Sandip Tarkas
Sandip Tarkas
Tarkas joined office five days ago and will look at figuring out the customer. His mandate at the Future Group entails studying customer psyche, consumption patterns of customers and honing the customer. It’s a “media and research” job, as he puts it.

Biyani says, “As a group, we need to converge customer strategy and with Sandip now with us, we hope to achieve that goal.”

An IIT graduate, who later did his MBA from IIM Bangalore, Tarkas says media “just happened”. He started his career with ONGC and worked with Leo Mattel for a while before moving to HTA (now JWT) in 1995 as associate media director. He headed implementation planning at JWT, representing the agency at the ATG Worldwide Group from 1998 to 2000. He became head of Fulcrum India in 2000 and moved to the fairly new MPG in 2002 as president, South Asia. After he quit MPG, Tarkas worked with Media Direction as CEO from 2004 to 2006. After that, he was head of media at Reliance ADAG until now.

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