Zapak.com's Saurabh Gupta joins Allied Media as business head, digital

Gupta has serviced brands like PepsiCo, Mountain Dew, Michelin Tyres and Airtel.

Allied Media, the media planning, evaluation and buying arm of Percept, has appointed Saurabh Gupta as business head, digital media for the agency. He joins Allied from Reliance Entertainment Digital's Zapak.com, where he was business head, sales and operations.

In his new role, Gupta will be responsible for providing holistic digital solutions for all clients of Percept Media and also only digital direct clients. He will take care of India region, and integrate digital in the marcom solutions of all Percept Group clients.

On the digital strategy, Gupta says, "Digital media behaves in a very different form according to businesses and categories. But, most businesses are short-sighted and consider digital media as only a marcom instrument. We are here to change the way brands perceive digital as a medium and transform the entire marketing, making it a catalyst to achieve business objective and transform the brand life stage. Our strategy blueprint will be: digital led business re- engineering customised for brands."

Shripad Kulkarni, chief executive officer, Allied Media, says, "It's not about digital marketing but a fresh way of looking at marketing to digital savvy customers of our clients. So, we will have two digital teams - a digital strategy team which is a part of the core strategy team of Percept Media and a business team."

With his experience of almost 10 years in the industry, Gupta worked with renowned companies like Reliance Entertainment Digital and Wipro Technologies. He started his career in 2003 with Wipro as a subject matter expert. He moved on from the organisation in 2005 and joined Lakshya Consulting as assistant manager, business development.

He then shifted to Pieco Infotech as senior manager, business acquisition in 2007. In 2009, Gupta joined Games2Win as regional manager, North India and stayed there for two years. In 2011, he shifted to Zapak.com/ Reliance Entertainment Digital as business head, social media.

In December 2012, he was promoted to the position of business head, sales and operations.

He played a major role in Zapak Digital as national sales head and has serviced brands like PepsiCo (Change the Game Campaign and Pepsi T20 Football), Mountain Dew (Dew Extreme Tours, Hrithik launch and MTV Roadies Integration), Michelin Tires (Malaysia Pilot Experience, Lemans) and Airtel (F1 Online Activity).