RAPP India names Kapil Bhatia as AVP

Bhatia joins RAPP India from Squad Digital Nairobi, where he looked after the operations of the agency across digital strategy, creative solutions, media planning, social media marketing and mobile marketing.

Marketing communications agency RAPP India has appointed Kapil Bhatia as associate vice-president for handling the agency's clientele in Mumbai. Bhatia will manage and nurture some of the key business relationships and help the management with new business acquisitions for the agency.

Bhatia joins RAPP India from Squad Digital Nairobi, where he was working as general manager overseeing the operations of the agency across digital strategy, creative solutions, media planning, social media marketing and mobile marketing.

Before moving to Nairobi, Bhatia had worked with the DDB Mudra Group for four years and was primarily in charge of client servicing for one of the agency's largest clients, LIC. Interestingly, RAPP and Tribal DDB are part of the DDB Mudra Group and the Omnicom Group Worldwide.

Bhatia comes with a professional experience of 10 years in the field of advertising, marketing, corporate communications and project management. Besides Mudra, Bhatia has also worked with Quasar, BluePrint Marketing and others.

Commenting on this, Venkat Mallik, president, RAPP India and Tribal Worldwide India, says, "We are going through an interesting phase of transformation and growth at RAPP in India. Kapil joins RAPP at just the right time as we look to remodel the agency and introduce a set of new initiatives to strengthen the multi-channel RAPP offering across mass media, e-commerce, social media, email marketing and CRM. RAPP is one of the few agencies with the ability to offer genuinely integrated communication thinking and Kapil's skills and experience complement this really well."

Bhatia says, "This is going to be an exciting opportunity to tap into my through the line communication understanding. I look forward to help RAPP with building its multi-channel capabilities."

Bijoe George, vice-president, RAPP India, says, "As we go about building RAPP India as a media agnostic, data-led agency, we needed leaders who can champion this cause amongst clients. Kapil comes with the requisite experience and fits the bill perfectly."

In January 2013, in a bid to strengthen and grow its operations in the South, Tribal DDB and RAPP India have expanded the leadership roles. Saugata Bagchi, vice-president, Tribal DDB, took on additional charge of the West and South operations. Similarly, George was mandated to look after the West and South operations of the agency.

For the record, RAPP India, a unit of DDB India Group, is a part of the RAPP Worldwide network. The data-driven marketing communications agency provides media-agnostic brand communication solutions, customer relationship management, customer acquisition and retention solutions.