Hires & Promotions: GroupM, Plum

GroupM India Restructures Central Trading Group Leadership

GroupM India restructures its media buying function- Central Trading Group (CTG). With GroupM’s vision to constantly strive towards leveraging its expertise and delivering greater client value, this restructuring will bring new leadership with a fresh outlook and thought leadership to continue delivering client excellence.

“This restructure is a part of evolving transformation for GroupM. We constantly recognize and invest in talent across functions for our team members who have helped evolve key areas like the media buying practice. The relentless commitment to delivering value to its client’s business is what truly defines team CTG, and I am privileged to lead a multi-dimensional team of leaders who are passionate about media and our client’s business. I am delighted to see these leaders grow and take on larger responsibilities in shaping the GroupM CTG transformational journey.” said Sidharth Parashar, President – Investments and Pricing, GroupM India.

Pratik Rathod who has been successfully leading buying for Wavemaker will be taking on an elevated group-level role of National Broadcast Head, GroupM India. Pratik’s expertise, vast experience and approach to creative solutions will help us further leverage one of the largest mediums. Pratik will help strengthen GroupM’s OneVoice priorities and strengthen media partnerships.

Muralidhar T is taking on an elevated role of leading buying function for the whole of Mindshare. Over the years, Muralidhar has done a commendable job and his contribution has led Mindshare buying scale-up to new heights. Murali’s strategic thinking & astute commercial acumen would help the overall agency further enhance the buying product and enable higher value to unlock for the clients.

K Srinivas Rao takes over the Wavemaker buying mandate from Pratik Rathod. Srini has been leading the Mediacom buying function for the past few years. For MediaCom, Srini has built a strong integrated buying team and strengthened the overall buying products by adopting strong processes. Srini’s agile work style and high people orientation will help him take the Wavemaker buying ambitions to new heights.

Rahul Satoskar, currently the region buying lead for Mindshare west, gets elevated to lead Mediacom buying nationally. Rahul is a unique blend of buying, strategy and execution excellence, which we see as a strong foundation to benefit both- clients as well as Mediacom.

Plum Appoints Abhishek Agrawal As Chief Business Officer, Digital

Continuing its expansion in the D2C sector, Plum – a home-grown, 100% vegan, PETA certified beauty brand has appointed Abhishek Agrawal as Chief Business Officer, Digital. Abhishek brings strong channel understanding, business-building skills and team leadership to Plum. 

With over 150 SKUs across skincare, haircare, makeup, bath & body as well male care (through brand PHY), Plum has steadily built its customer base on both online and offline platforms. In addition to being among the top new-age beauty brands online, the brand also now reaches over 225 towns and cities in India, through 850+ assisted outlets, and over 10,000 unassisted outlets - growing month-on-month. It is also one of the few new-age beauty brands to have crossed an annualized revenue run rate of Rs. 200 crores. Recently, the company also announced the opening of its first ever exclusive offline store in Mumbai. 

Abhishek joins Plum with a rich experience of 15+ years across Sales and Marketing, Category Management and P&L, Business Planning, Supply Chain & Network Design, Client and Account management. In his last stint, he was leading the fledgling e-commerce vertical for ITC across Foods, Personal Care and FMCG, covering 30 brands with over 1,000 SKUs. An alumnus of IIT Kanpur, he has pursued B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering in 2006 followed by an MBA from ISB in 2013.

Speaking on the development, Shankar Prasad, CEO & Founder Plum said, “We're delighted to welcome Abhishek to Plum to lead our digital businesses, including our D2C vertical. Given the tremendously exciting growth path ahead, we look forward to leveraging Abhishek's expertise in business building and team leadership to build something we all can be proud of”. 

On his appointment, Abhishek Agrawal, CBO (Digital), Plum said, “I’m incredibly excited about this leap into the D2C beauty and personal care space. I look forward to bring in my expertise and leverage it to accelerate brand’s vision of establishing Plum as the most preferred clean beauty brand.”