Sanchayeeta Verma moves to Maxus as general manager, South

Maxus, the global communications consultancy and a part of GroupM, has appointed Sanchayeeta Verma as general manager, South. She will be based in Bengaluru and will report to Ajit Varghese, managing director, Maxus. Before joining Maxus, Verma was director, Mindshare Insights and regional coordination for tools and techniques development. She has been with GroupM since December 2003.

Commenting on Verma's new role and responsibilities, Varghese says, "Verma's previous assignment saw her helping out clients such as Motorola, Virgin Mobile and others in raising the quality of product planning across markets. Now, she will utilise her planning experience in running the Bengaluru office."

Speaking to afaqs!, Verma says that her early days as a marketing person saw her going through the usual grind of selling products and achieving sales targets. Her stint at Initiative Media as director, channel planning provided her the opportunity of working on many FMCG products and durable goods.

Sharing details about a few of her most memorable and satisfying projects, Verma says, "Way back in 2005, there was a campaign celebrating childhood for the brand Horlicks. It required looking at various econometrics that would contribute to the increase in sales and growth of the product. The research was for a media plan, which included school contact programmes and exciting properties on Pogo."

The work won Mindshare Emvie golds under two categories – the Best Media Strategy and the Best Activation/Event.

The Virgin Mobile campaign (2008) is another personal favourite, which travelled to the International Advertising Festival at Cannes this year.

Verma steps into the shoes of Hariharan Vishwanath, general manager, Bengaluru, who is moving on as general manager, trading head, MEC.