... and Madhukar Kamath joins Mudra as MD and CEO

Madhukar Kamath, who quit recently as Bates India CEO, remained uncontactable all of yesterday. But agencyfaqs! has learnt from reliable sources that the 48-year-old ex-Mudra hand is headed back to the agency as managing director and chief operating officer. He will take charge when current chairman and managing director AG Krishnamurthy completes his tenure in end-March.

Readers of agencyfaqs! may remember the story we ran last month "Kamath contradicts The Economic Times report; but questions remain" (January 30, 2003), where we stated that Kamath's departure might happen "sooner than later". As it turns out, he is ready to return to the agency he quit exactly four years ago. This time round he will bring to the agency over two decades of management experience including spearheading a very difficult turnaround at Bates.

Kamath, a management degree holder from XLRI, had his first brush with advertising when he joined Clarion McCann in the late seventies. A decade later, he was to join Mudra Communications to be part of it growth process. He quit the agency as a director on the board of Mudra Communications in early 1999, when he was called upon to set up Bates' India opeartions. That was at a time when Bates Worldwide was reconfiguring its Indian operations and Bates Clarion was being merged with its parent company in July 1999.

Talking about his stint at Bates during a recent interview to agencyfaqs!, Kamath stated, "With the authorisation and backing of the network, the acquisition of Clarion in July 1999 was undertaken very smoothly. The steps taken thereafter are already part of the turnaround case study at IIM Bangalore. We became Bates India in January 2000. In the three calendar years since then, out of which two have been the toughest for the advertising industry, Bates India has doubled its revenue. In fact, we doubled our bottomline in 2002 over the previous year, 2001."

So, at least for the moment, all conjectures regarding the succession issue at Mudra can be laid to rest... © 2003 agencyfaqs!