MUMBAI: GroupM South Asia announced a restructuring in its leadership, to continue delivering the advantages of global operations and learnings with local expertise and sharp market insights.                      

Effective immediately, Prasanth Kumar is named chief operating officer, South Asia, and Tushar Vyas is named president growth and transformation, South Asia, the brand new roles in the organisation.

In addition, Parthasarathy Mandayam is named Mindshare’s CEO for South Asia and Amin Lakhani is named Mindshare’s chief operating officer in South Asia.

Prasanth Kumar, who was handling the post of Mindshare CEO till now, will now be responsible for operational excellence of GroupM and will lead the teams across OpCos, trading and specialised units.

Tushar Vyas, who was responsible for the launch of digital media agency business unit (interaction) for GroupM India, in his new role will drive digital transformation and focus on building GroupM capability focusing on digital, data, analytics and content.  

Speaking on the new appointments, GroupM South Asia CEO Sam Singh said, “Prasanth and Tushar are passionate leaders with high integrity and proven ability to envision and deliver successful outcomes in a challenging environment. As we become a more data-centric organisation, there is a need to drive transformation and build future capabilities with a focus on digital, data, analytics, and content. We must work across GroupM to drive organisational transformation and operational excellence. The new team structure is another step in this direction.”

He added, “I am also sad to announce that Lakshmi Narasimhan our chief growth officer for GroupM South Asia has decided to step down from his current role effective 31 January 2019, to pursue personal interests. I thank him for his contributions over the years and wish him all the best. We will miss him as we continue to build upon his hard work and passion. Lakshmi was instrumental in building our strong trading community with solid practices”.

Parthasarathy Mandayam will take over the role of chief executive officer (CEO) of Mindshare, South Asia from Prasanth, effective 1 February 2019.  He has spent 10+ years with Mindshare in various leadership roles – data, insights, analytics, strategy, client leadership and business unit leadership. He will report into Sam Singh, CEO GroupM, South Asia, Prasanth Kumar – COO – GroupM South Asia and Amrita Randhawa, CEO Mindshare Asia Pacific.

Going forward, Amin Lakhani will take on the role of chief operating officer (COO) for Mindshare South Asia. Amin has over 20 years’ experience in various roles in Mindshare and GroupM and is currently leading client leadership at Mindshare.

Talking on the latest developments, the new GroupM COO Prasanth Kumar said, “Our industry is an ever-mutating one, so we have to also continue to evolve and adapt. With Maps and Amin now at the helm of Mindshare, we have leaders with a proven track record of consistently achieving clients’ business goals. They will continue cultivating client relationships at the highest level and delivering great results.”