Sohail Qadri joins Columbus India as Business Head - West

Columbus India, the digital agency of Dentsu Aegis Network, has announced the appointment of Sohail Khan Qadri as business head – West. Qadri joins the agency to lead Columbus India’s digital AOR business in Western India. He will report to Nitin Sabharwal, chief business officer, Columbus India.

Sohail QadriQadri joins Columbus India with 18 years of extensive experience in digital communication, digital AOR, content marketing solutions, social media optimisation and marketing, search engine marketing, digital media planning and buying, mobile media, and technology and start-ups. Qadri has worked with vMobo Mobile, DGM India, R K Swamy BBDO, Tribal DDB India, Lintas and Interactive Realities. He has worked across businesses into Telecom, Consumer Electronics, Retail, Auto, FMCG, BFSI, Sports, Healthcare, Public Policy and Governance. His last stint was at iRealities where he was appointed as business director.

In his current role, Qadri will focus on building the Digital AOR business for Columbus India. As business head for Western India, Qadri would be actively involved in crafting a roadmap for the growth of digital AOR business across key categories such as BFSI, ecommerce, Brand Commerce, Education, FMCG and many more.

Nitin SabharwalCommenting on his assignment, Qadri, says in a press release, “The digital consumer is evolving, and so are the channels to reach them online. Traditional AOR business has been more focused on being campaign driven with digital coming at the far end of the planning process, largely implementing the strategies driven by a much larger mainline agenda. We are seeing that often the digital strategy lacks cohesion between key elements such as business objective, communication objective, campaign objective, channels of execution, consumer experience, content, technology and brand performance. Columbus is in a unique position to stitch all these pieces together to offer brands a digital AOR that blends the elements of communication, content, creative, media, social, search, performance and finally sales through a cohesively designed and executed digital strategy”

Sabharwal, says in a press release, “We have set up Columbus to continuously adapt and adopt the latest Digital trends and practices and give a holistic and seamless solution to our clients. With Sohail joining us, we are sure of pushing the envelope even further with much deeper insights and solutions to deliver against the client’s objectives.”

Anurag Gupta, chief executive officer, SVG Media, says in a press release, “Columbus India was set up less than a year ago and has already won some pretty large mandates from leading clients across India. We have done some award winning work during our debut year. As Digital becomes more mainstream, we welcome the addition of Sohail to the team who will help us take Columbus business to new growth trajectories.”