After Sonal Dabral, Bates loses its Group CEO Sandeep Pathak

Pathak's next destination is unknown at the moment.

Bates India's group chief executive officer Sandeep Pathak has quit the agency. Unfortunately for Bates, the news comes in barely a day or two after reports announcing the exit of its regional executive creative director and chairperson, Sonal Dabral.

While reports claim that Dabral is slated to join Mudra as chairman and CCO, as a replacement for Bobby Pawar, Pathak's next destination is unknown at the moment. Sources say that he will take a brief break from January 31.

Pathak joined Bates in January 2007 as head, Mumbai. In September, 2008, he was promoted as chief executive officer.

With 21 years of experience in the advertising industry, he began his career with a short stint in marketing. In 1991, he joined Clarion Advertising as senior account executive in Mumbai.

In 1997, he was asked to head the Chennai office of the agency, which went on to become Bates Clarion. After two years in Chennai, in 1999, he joined Leo Burnett Mumbai as general manager.

He was with Leo Burnett for eight years, before stepping down as brand partner.

Dabral has been part of the advertising industry for the past 28 years. His first brush with an ad agency was at Clarion where he interned for three weeks in 1984. Later, Dabral did a diploma project with JWT in Delhi.

After graduating from NID (National Institute of Design), Dabral applied for a job at Lintas. His stint with Lintas lasted for five years after which he joined Mudra, Delhi, where he worked for about six months. In Mudra, there were a lot of IPO-related campaigns that Dabral worked on. 

After that, Dabral moved to Ogilvy where he had a successful run at the agency's Mumbai and Singapore offices. At the latter, Dabral occupied the post of executive creative director and chairman.

Dabral is best remembered for his ground-breaking work on brands such as Cadbury and Binnies. 

In October 2011, Bates Asia embarked on a new journey, opting for a new look sans '141'. The agency also rolled out a new philosophy and a revamped logo. The new philosophy is 'Changengage', which is an amalgamation of two words -- change and engage. The agency's new logo features the Bates typeface in Helvetica font, and three speech balloons in dark pink, yellow and blue, replacing the former eye mnemonic.

Is the freshly solo Bates India in trouble? Only time will tell.