MUMBAI: In a bid to bolster its core leadership, GroupM India has elevated and assigned new responsibilities to GroupM business head - entertainment & sports practice (ESP) Vinit Karnik and Wavemaker India chief content officer Karthik Nagarajan.
Karnik will take over the new role of head – sports, esports and entertainment at the agency’s south Asia unit; Nagarajan will take on the additional charge of head of branded content at GroupM India.
In their new roles, Karnik and Nagarajan will report to GroupM south Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar.
“Disruption and evolution go hand in hand and it also brought in opportunities in the content, sports and entertainment space and it is consistently redefining the market place,” said CEO Prasanth Kumar. “While we will continue to build on advertising technologies that will add speed and scale, we are equally committed to enhance our creative process and enable larger solutions in the content space. These leadership appointments signify our commitment to the journey and I am confident in both Vinit and Karthik’s abilities and together we look forward to creating great solutions and opportunities for our clients as well as our partners.”
Karnik joined GroupM 14 years ago and has been at the forefront of some of the high profile, high-value sponsorship and consulting deals in the business of sports and entertainment. Under him, the agency witnessed the launch of thought leadership for Indian sports and entertainment reports titled ‘Sporting Nation in the Making’ and ‘Showbiz’ respectively. Before joining GroupM in 2006, he was a part of the film fraternity in Mumbai, heading the film production and distribution business of Padmalaya Telefilms and Prasad Film Labs post production studio.
“Today a brand has various means to reach out to its audience be it via sports, social media, esports, influencers etc,” said Karnik. “Hence by strengthening our offerings and by bringing together creative optimisation and data, we want to ensure that the brands get to reach their consumers with content, which is highly personalised, effective and relevant for them.”
Nagarajan spent a significant part of his early career in consulting, as a practice head for Frost & Sullivan in the US. Before joining GroupM in 2011, he set up Nielsen’s online division and was also the India country head for NM Incite, the joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey for social media consulting in India. He set up the social media practice for GroupM India, which also included its foray into advocacy. Nagarajan also evangelised the data agenda for GroupM by building its social analytics practice, products like Radar and the command centre offering. In 2015, he conceived and launched Brew, which became the premier content up-front event for not just GroupM but the industry as well.
