Percept consolidates marcom business; Shiv Sethuraman is CEO of 'Percept One'

Previously, the marcom business comprised three separate verticals namely creative, media and other services.

Percept has restructured and consolidated the manifold Marketing Communications Services into a single business entity 'Percept One' (it has revenues of Rs 125 crore) from this month. Previously, the Marketing Communications Services business of Percept spanned three separate verticals - creative services, media services and other services.

Former CEO of TBWA, Shiv Sethuraman has been appointed chief executive officer, Percept One, with effect from July 14, 2014. He will be responsible for leading business development and Integration of all marcom services, creating opportunities for synergy within and across the marcom businesses of the Group, attaining profitability and revenue growth while drawing up the roadmap for the overall marcom business of the Percept Group.

He has a mandate of driving a 30 per cent year-on-year growth with a target of achieving revenues of Rs 275 crore by 2017. "With Percept One," says Sethuraman, "we are bringing together successful individual businesses to create an integrated entity. The mandate and the challenge is to use this size (700 people and Rs 125 crore in revenues) and scale to propel us to a faster growth trajectory."

Welcoming Sethuraman to Percept, Ajay Upadhyay, director, Percept states, "His global leadership experience and brand experience will help us achieve the scale and growth targets we have set for ourselves."

Sethuraman has had a two-decade-long career in the media and communications domain. He has handled dynamic portfolios spanning global brand development and business acquisition. At TBWA, Sethuraman personally led the Nissan, adidas and infrastructure and realty cluster within the agency. Having kickstarted his advertising career with Ogilvy, he cut his teeth on many of the key clients of the agency such as Cadbury, Castrol Unilever and Shell. He moved to Ogilvy, Paris in 2001 as global business director and later became managing director, Ogilvy & Mather, Paris where he acquired large global and regional accounts such as Louis Vuitton, Coca-Cola Europe and Europcar and also managed several businesses including IBM, Unilever and Nestle.

Founded in 1984, Percept, an entertainment, media and communications company, works with a team of over 1,000 people and 62 offices in India and the Middle East and has capitalised billings of Rs 2,700 crore.