Happy appoints Siddhartha Roy as COO

Prior to this, Roy was with Phoenix Ogilvy, Sri Lanka, where he set up and headed the strategic planning cell and also led account management.

Happy, the five-year-old creative agency headquartered in Bengaluru, has roped in Siddhartha Roy for the newly created post of chief operating officer.

As part of his mandate, Roy will be responsible for Happy's operations across all branches pan India and will report to co-founder and CEO, Kartik Iyer. For the record, currently the agency holds offices in Bengaluru and Mumbai. Praveen Das is the co-founder and director of the agency.

Prior to this, Roy was with Phoenix Ogilvy, Sri Lanka, where he set up and headed the strategic planning cell and also led account management.

Iyer says, "We think it's time to take a more structured approach to reach our goals. Roy comes with the right level of experience combined with the hunger to do the unexpected - this is very much the DNA of Happy. Known as 'Oldmonkster' among friends, we think he is the perfect fit as our COO. We welcome him and are very confident that this addition will take things to a whole new level."

Roy says, "I think there are seismic changes taking place in the business of communications today. Gone are the days of agency imperialism. While marketers are looking for 'ideas', large network agencies are increasingly selling 'processes'. And, over the past few years, Happy has been successfully capitalising on this need gap. This is the primary reason for me to join the Happy family - and I'm extremely excited about it."

With more than 16 years of experience, Roy has spent 10 years with Ogilvy in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Sri Lanka. Besides Ogilvy, he has worked with Publicis Ambience and Everest Advertising, as well as loyalty marketing specialists DIREM.

Roy has been associated with a diverse spread of categories and brands such as FMCG (Cadbury, ITC Foods, Nestle, Coke, Ceylon Tobacco Company), telecom (Hutch/Vodafone, Reliance, Sri Lanka Telecom), web (Yahoo) and retail (Madura Garments).