WPP’s Ogilvy launches 82.5 Communications

Indian companies, startups and entrepreneurs - this is Ogilvy group’s new area of focus. WPP’s Ogilvy has launched 82.5 Communications, a creative agency that specifically caters to the Indian entrepreneurship landscape. It will be headquartered in Mumbai with offices in New Delhi, Bengaluru and Kolkata.

Piyush Pandey, chief creative officer worldwide, executive chairman India, Ogilvy, said, "82.5 will meet a key need in the creative services market for an agency that is tailored to help realise the aspirations of emerging Indian companies, entrepreneurs and brands as well as MNCs who want to ‘Indianise’ their brands and forge a connect with Indian audiences." Pandey elaborated that, "Such challenger brands are often very strong in their respective categories or geographies, and invariably seek the same qualities that they themselves exhibited, in their creative agencies: passion, agility, out-of-the box thinking and a deep desire to grow."

Elaborating on this, Sumanto Chattopadhyay, Chairman and CCO, 82.5 Communications said, "The focus will be on finding ingenious, bespoke solutions to client’s problems. India has for long had a culture of finding interesting and effective solutions to everyday problems-we are, as a nation, very creative. It’s this creative mindset that we hope to inculcate in 82.5. The rationale for our name, incidentally, is that 82.5 is the longitude of Indian Standard Time. As an agency focussed on Indian entrepreneurship and Indian ingenuity, we felt this name would be apt."

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Soho Square is another creative agency that belongs to the Ogilvy group in India and 82.5 Communications will be responsible for managing its accounts. V.S. Srikanth, former Director and CEO of Bates CHI & Partners India will be 82.5 Communications’ CEO, Siddhartha Roy will be the executive vice preisdent, planning. Anuraag Khandelwal, Mayur Verma, and Mukund Sharma will be executive creative directors and Ranadeep Dasgupta will be the group creative director.