YES Bank hires Triton's Yateesh Srivastava as chief marketing officer

Yateesh Srivastava, who was executive director, strategic planning at Triton Communications, is now the chief marketing officer at YES Bank. Srivastava came on board on February 7, 2005. His last day of work at Triton was on January 31, 2005.

At YES Bank, which is a private bank promoted by Ashok Kapur and Rana Kapoor, Srivastava has the task of pushing the 'one-bank' concept. “This means that various business groups will have one marketing arm, and the endeavour will be to promote one holistic brand to consumer segments,” says Srivastava.

Triton will continue as the bank’s 'lead ad agency', while Alok Nanda & Company (ANC) will carry on doing the 'collateral' work (read internal design etc). Its maiden advertising campaign devised by Triton was launched in December last year.

The campaign focused on communicating the bank’s inherent strengths – professional entrepreneurship, strong financial investors, excellence in human capital, knowledge expertise and the use of technology – with the help of a growing money plant. The campaign used print, outdoor and TV to communicate the message.

YES Bank began operations in September last year in areas of corporate banking and treasury services. Plans are to move into retail banking for which the bank intends opening about 8-10 branches by the end of March this year. The eventual gameplan is to have a 100-branch network with a balanced mix in urban, semi-urban and key rural pockets in the country.

Knowledge will be a key differentiator for the Mumbai-headquartered bank, which is currently working on a range of products for large and medium enterprises. From the point of view of communication, the concept of a “knowledge-driven bank” will be heavily promoted, and apart from retail banking, Yes Bank is looking to diversify into merchant banking, asset management and so on.

Its Indian promoters, for the uninitiated, launched Rabobank in India in the mid-1990s. Ashok Kapur and Rana Kapoor jointly hold 52 per cent of YES Bank’s equity, while 20 per cent is held by Rabobank, Netherlands, and another 25 per cent is collectively in the custody of CVC-Citigroup, New York; AIF Capital, Hong Kong; and ChrysCapital, San Francisco. The balance of 3 per cent is being subscribed to by some top management executives.

For Srivastava, the current assignment is his first marketing job in a 17-year advertising career. A master’s degree holder in history from Delhi University, Srivastava has done time with Lowe, Ambience and Triton – the last 20 months as executive director, strategic planning.

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