Havas Creative Network taps Tina Garg to bolster South ops

When Havas Creative Network India announced Tina Mansukhani Garg as president of its creative agency in India, it signalled more than just a leadership change—it marked a strategic escalation of its ambitions in the southern market.

Garg, founder and former CEO of Bengaluru-based Pink Lemonade Communications, steps into the role with a remit to accelerate business momentum, deepen client relationships, and strengthen the creative agency’s footprint across South India. Based in Bengaluru, she will report directly to Rana Barua, group CEO of Havas India, South East Asia and North Asia.

The appointment underscores Havas' broader push to establish strong regional hubs that are capable of delivering integrated, culturally grounded, and globally aligned work. Garg now leads a team of over 70 at Havas Creative Bengaluru, managing key clients while also driving expansion in a market that the group views as “fast-evolving” and “full of creative and business potential,” as Barua put it.

Her arrival comes during a period of notable momentum for the agency. Havas Creative India recently notched up new business wins and earned a Gold at the 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for its ‘Ink of Democracy’ campaign for Times of India. Garg will work closely with managing director Kundan Joshee and joint managing director and CCO Anupama Ramaswamy to sustain and build on this trajectory.

With a career spanning nearly three decades across branding, content, digital and design strategy, Garg brings hands-on experience in integrated marketing and scaling operations. Her previous venture, Pink Lemonade, grew into an agency that worked with more than 1,000 global and domestic brands, including Swiggy, Dell, GE Healthcare, Hyundai, PwC, Societe Generale and Mercedes.

“What drew me to Havas is its bold vision, its commitment to purposeful creativity, and the opportunity to work across diverse categories at scale,” Garg said, explaining her move. She added that Havas’ Village model—which brings creative, media, and health services together under one roof—was a “big draw” because it enables “integrated, future-forward solutions for clients.”

Barua described her as someone with an “entrepreneurial spirit” and “proven leadership,” adding, “I am confident she will help us unlock new opportunities, build stronger client partnerships, and elevate the creative ambition of our South operations.”

Garg’s appointment reflects Havas Creative Network India’s broader strategy of integration. Its structure includes agencies across multiple domains—creative (Havas Creative India), customer experience (Havas CX India), tech and digital consulting (ekino), talent communications (Havas People India), UI/UX (Think Design), branding and design (Conran Design Mumbai), public relations (PR Pundit Havas Red), experiential marketing (Shobiz), exhibitions (Shobiz Exhibits), and content production (Prose on Pixels).

Garg’s mandate sits at the intersection of these capabilities, where the goal is to combine creativity with media, technology and culture under a unified operating system. It’s a model Havas is pushing globally, and now sharpening in India’s regional hubs.

Her hiring also reflects a bet on experienced entrepreneurs who can lead in-house teams while bringing the agility and client-centricity of independent agencies. Garg is a Fortune–U.S. State Department mentee, listed among NITI Aayog’s Top 200 Women Entrepreneurs, and an alumna of the ISB-Goldman Sachs Ambassadors Programme. She’s also held leadership positions at Ernst & Young and holds degrees in journalism, marketing and computer science from institutions including Symbiosis and Pune Institute of Computer Technology.

As the Indian consumer landscape tilts toward an ‘Attention Economy’—where audience engagement is increasingly shaped by algorithm-driven content—Havas Creative Network India is doubling down on digitally aligned creative strategy. In April 2025, the network appointed Prashanth Challapalli as chief digital and innovation officer, a newly created role aimed at embedding emerging technologies into the agency’s operations. His brief: develop digital-first strategies and evolve storytelling formats across the agency’s platforms, using tools like Converged—Havas’ AI-powered operating system that ties together media, data, and creativity. His role is emblematic of the direction Havas is heading in, with digital transformation seen not just as an add-on but as core to its creative ambition.

It’s in this evolving landscape that Garg now takes charge in Bengaluru—India’s tech capital and a city that increasingly sits at the intersection of innovation and consumer insight. Her challenge will be to align the agency’s work with the cultural codes of the region while also tapping into the nationwide shift toward integrated, tech-enabled brand solutions.

Garg views her transition from founder to network executive as an opportunity to scale impact. “Being part of a network like Havas opens up avenues to create work that’s not just compelling, but truly transformative,” she said. “I look forward to building breakthrough ideas, nurturing talent, and driving meaningful impact for our clients and communities alike.”

Havas, for its part, is betting that someone who has already built a respected agency from scratch is the right person to embed that mindset in a scaled, structured environment. But with that comes the task of navigating a creative landscape where expectations are higher, media is fragmented, and clients demand more measurable results.

Still, with AI reshaping workflows, talent models evolving, and regional markets growing in complexity, Havas’ move to double down on regional leadership reflects where the future of creative networks may be headed—not in centralisation, but in distributed, nimble hubs led by practitioners who’ve built things before. In Garg, Havas Creative seems to have found someone ready for that challenge.