Dainik Bhaskar promotes Raja Mitra and Dharmendra Atri as national sales heads

Mitra will be the national sales head for DB Corp's Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh (MPCG), Bihar and Jharkhand markets, while Atri will handle Rajasthan and Chandigarh, Punjab, Haryana & Himachal Pradesh (CPH2) markets.

The group also plans to make similar announcements for Divya Bhaskar in Gujarat and Divya Marathi in Maharashtra.

The announcement comes in the wake of the state-wise structuring of the company's corporate sales and marketing (CS&M) division that took place almost a year ago. Going forward, DB Corp aims to further strengthen the business with a full state-focused model with segments that will focus on zones and industry vertical specialists.

Commenting on the internal promotions, Pradeep Dwivedi, chief corporate sales and marketing officer, DB Corp, says, "By spelling out our strategy today, we are making a strong commitment to direct our efforts and resources towards better growth, in a more dedicated manner across the Unmetro Tier-2 and 3 India. Our current state-led focus stems from the customer requirements in each market as well as our constant endeavour to maintain the competitive edge in most of our regions of operation. We are confident that our strategies will be efficiently driven by both Raja Mitra and Dharmendra Atri in their respective markets. They are both senior industry leaders with vast experience in media business and enjoy trust of our media agency partners and clients, with proven team leadership and execution skills."

He further adds that the successful run of the FMCG vertical DB Connect in the last two years has further strengthened the group's belief in vertical expansion. "We are therefore keen to drive an agenda of vertical expansion in a few key categories as we have observed that this approach has been delivering good results and enhanced value to our media partners and clients. To start with, we will set up a few independent verticals, viz. Lifestyle & Auto which will encompass the geographies of North, West and South regions in the country, apart from Government & PSU, FMCG which are already in place," adds Dwivedi.

Mitra has more than 21 years of experience across various industries in the areas of sales and marketing management, operations and general management. His industry domain spans engineering, B2B, IP-telco, telecom and media across a wide gamut of brands. He has been in the media industry for the last nine years. He joined the ABP Group in 2005 and moved to DB Corp in Bengaluru. Before ABP, Mitra was senior vice-president at Caltiger.com. He's also worked for Usha Martin Industries and ITW Signode India.

Atri began his journey with DB Group in 1998. In a span of 16 years, he has shouldered the responsibility of advertising sales at different locations of DB Group such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana.

Earlier, he was associated with Parle Products, Cadbury's and Indian Express.