MUMBAI: GroupM has elevated two of its senior executives of the Central Trading Group (CTG). The company elevates Sidharth Parashar as head, Pricing & Investments, and Jai Lala as head, Trading & Partnerships.

Both Lala and Parashar will report to CTG south Asia managing partner Prasanth Kumar.

Prior to his promotion, Parashar was the agency buying head for Maxus, for over five years, where he was a valued member of the leadership team, working on media mandates for brands such as Google, Nokia, Vodafone to name a few. In his new role Parashar will be responsible to facilitate and execute GroupM investment mandates across media. His key focus will be on the GroupM trading products that should continue to offer the edge to our clients. All the GroupM agency trading heads and cluster heads will now report in to Praashar.

Prior to Lala’s elevation, he was the agency trading head for Mindshare, where he worked on media mandates for clients such as Pepsi, GlaxoSmithkline, ICICI, Aditya Birla Group and Nike. Going forward Lala will be managing all trading mandates at GroupM. He will also be heading a team of all the heads across verticals: Proprietary media, DTH, Xaxis, Syndication, GME and Special projects and maximize value for our clients. He will also work closely with Parashar and the agency trading heads on delivering the maximum ROI on media investments.

Speaking on the new structure, Kumar said, “As we move into a growth phase largely driven by converging synergies across the group and driving client satisfaction it has become critical that we create more focus, especially in the area of media investment. With the development of new concepts of integrated media, merging traditional and digital media, we are also looking at reforming the way we plan our investments as a central hub. This new structure in our core function will deliver unparalleled client delight and value.”