Lodestar Universal’s Arpita Menon to join the ABP Group

Menon will assume office in January 2007 as national head for the ABP Group’s new unit for business intelligence and strategic marketing

Arpita Menon, who recently put in her papers at Lodestar Universal, is all set to join the Ananda Bazaar Patrika Group (ABP Group) in January 2007 as the national head for its new unit for business intelligence and strategic marketing. Menon will report to Vikas Gupta, president, ‘Businessworld’ magazine, and group chief marketing officer.

Her mandate here will be to establish the unit and keep track of readership in order to provide quality service to the clients in a strategic framework.

Arpita Menon

Prior to this, Menon was vice-president at Lodestar Universal. She has been with Lodestar for the past 12 years and was witness to the merger of Lodestar with Universal McCann (to form Lodestar Universal) a few months ago. Some of the businesses she is known to have steered at Lodestar Universal are Tata Teleservices, Amul, Strepsils, Nerolac and LIC. She has also played a crucial role in setting up various initiatives such as Labcentre, Media Perfedia Involvement Index, Mediagraphics, Lodestar Matrix, ImPress and Journeyman.

Menon has more than 15 years of experience in the media industry and has worked with agencies such as JWT (then Hindustan Thompson Associates), FCB-Ulka and Starcom (then Chaitra Leo Burnett), prior to Lodestar Universal.

For the record, ‘Ananda Bazar Patrika’ is the largest Bengali daily and one of the most widely-read newpapers in the country. The group publishes several periodicals, including ‘Anandamela’, a children's magazine; ‘Anandalok’, a film magazine; ‘Desh’, a literary magazine; ‘Boier Desh’, another literary magazine; ‘Sananda’, a women’s magazine; ‘The Telegraph’, an English daily; and ‘Businessworld’, a business magazine. The group also owns a 24-hour Bengali news channel, STAR Ananda, jointly with STAR India.

Have news to share? Write to us atnewsteam@afaqs.com