MediaCom witnesses leadership reshuffle

Hemen Desai will take over as MD, MediaCom Japan; Avinash Pillai will handle P&G, while Ashwini Kamat is national buying director, MediaCom India; Deepa Jatkar is GM, non-P&G businesses.

Media agency MediaCom has made several changes in its senior leadership in Mumbai. Hemen Desai, managing partner, Team P&G, will take over as managing director, MediaCom Japan. He will shift base to Tokyo.

Desai set up the exclusive team to look after the P&G media mandate and has been with MediaCom India since 2008. His team was behind the Gillete 'WALS' campaign for which MediaCom India bagged the Golden Media Lion at Cannes.

Interestingly, MediaCom Bengaluru's Anita Mookherjee shifted to Jakarta as managing director, MediaCom Indonesia, last week.

Avinash Pillai"_blank">Avinash Pillai, national buying director, MediaCom India will take over from Desai as general manager on the P&G account. Pillai has been with the agency for more than two years. Ashwini Kamat, general manager, non-P&G businesses including the VW Group, HRI, Aegon Religare, Wyeth, Pfizer and Edelweiss, will step into Pillai's previous role.

Deepa Jatkar takes over from Kamat. Earlier, Jatkar was leading the VW business. In fact, both Kamat and Jatkar were instrumental in fashioning and managing the award winning VW (Talking newspaper) and Skoda innovations.

Debraj Tripathy, managing director, MediaCom India, says, "This is in line with our endeavour to provide our top performers with bigger opportunities within the MediaCom network. MediaCom India continues to be the grooming ground for some of MediaCom's best managers in the region."