Restructuring at Grey; Ashutosh Khanna is COO

In a significant development, Grey Worldwide has announced some top-level restructuring at its offices across India. Senior vice-president, Grey Worldwide, Ashutosh Khanna will take over as chief operating officer, and Sameer Verma, who has recently joined Grey with 15 years of experience in marketing and advertising, will step into his shoes as head of the Delhi branch of Grey. Anirudh Mukhedkar, currently head of Bangalore, will be head of Mumbai, while Sushant Panda, who has worked in Grey offices across India, and in Colombo since 1990, will take over the reigns of Bangalore. Alongside, Jasmin Sohrabji and Harish Shriyan, the two senior vice-presidents at MediaCom (Grey's media wing), have now been promoted as presidents of the media arm. All these changes will be effective January 15, 2004.

agencyfaqs! readers may also recall that Prathap Suthan, who is currently associate vice-president, Grey Worldwide, has been promoted as national creative director, as stated in our Interview of the Week running on the site currently.

The current round of restructuring comes at the close of a year that seems to have brought the smiles back on the faces of the Grey India brass. Industry insiders say, while the overall advertising market grew at 8-9 per cent, Grey would have posted growth figures upwards of 25 per cent. The Delhi branch did a great job picking up new businesses. The recent acquisition of Samsung, estimated at Rs 30 crore, and the India Shining account has given a big boost to the agency's billings.

Talking about the changes Nirvik Singh, chairman, South Asia, Grey Global Group, says, "While Khanna will be the custodian of the advertising product of Grey across India, the non-advertising business will be my responsibility. The idea for me is to focus on the non-advertising businesses and make them stronger." For the record, Grey's India business spans public relations (GCI), healthcare (Grey Healthcare), event management (Event), exhibitions (Exhibits) as well as consulting in digital media (Grey Interactive), besides advertising. "All of these divisions have done well in the last one year and my vision is to build them up to a level so that the contribution of the advertising and the non-advertising businesses of Grey to its overall revenue is 50:50."

Incidentally, Grey has recently set up a second agency in India, G3, which kicked off its services in Delhi (its office is located at Chirag Enclave in south Delhi) under Rajiv Shukla and a captive client in Haier. Chinese company Haier is a manufacturer of household appliances and electronic goods with a roster of products including wine cellars, refrigerators, freezers, air-conditioners, dishwashers, laundry products and television sets. Singh forecasts that G3 will be a three-city operation by end 2004.

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