Cheil India strengthens leadership team

Gunjan Prasad, 19 September, 2008

New Delhi

Cheil Worlwide has hired Solutions Digitas' business director, FMCG, Krishan Kant to head all its BTL initiatives nationally. Kant replaces Jake Huh who has moved back to the Korean headquarter.

Kant's remit includes consolidation of the existing business in the retail, CRM, shopper marketing and activation areas as well as providing a more cohesive and integrated planning approach. Kant was with UCP, a specialist DM agency, where he was managing the Airtel account for one of the circles. He has also worked with Draft, Wunderman and TBWA and serviced accounts like Microsoft, HP, Pepsi, P&G, Pedigree, Somany, Hero Motors, CII, Airtel, among others, in various capacities across these agencies.

Kant's appointment comes close on the heels of Cheil filling its long vacant spot of a COO by snaring Alok Agrawal from Bates 141. "The excitement and challenge of building the Cheil brand in the advertising and communications industry and furthering the Samsung brand, was hard to resist. It's not often that one gets a chance to build the agency brand along with the client's brand," said Agrawal.

An IIT-IIM graduate, Agrawal will be responsible for managing the entire operations of the agency including advertising, BTL, media, OOH and planning.

"The immediate objective is to consolidate the rapidly expanding business of the agency, improve infrastructure and build local competence of the agency with better talent," said Agrawal. "Further, the agency infrastructure is being expanded beyond Delhi to set up representation across Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata." 

Agrawal started my career with Blowplast Ltd. as sales manager in 1990, moved to Trikaya Grey (now Grey worldwide) in early 1993 and spent almost 10 years with them at Bangalore and Delhi. After a year with Euro RSCG, Agrawal has spent the last five Delhi operations of Enterprise Nexus and Bates India as executive vice president.

He will report to the MD of Cheil Worldwide India.