Anand Bhadkamkar steps down as dentsu India CEO

Ashish Bhasin, APAC CEO and India chairman and Peter Huijboom, Global CEO, Media and Global Clients assume interim leadership.

Anand Bhadkamkar has stepped down as dentsu India’s CEO.

He’d joined the network in 2008 as its chief financial officer (CFO) and was appointed its chief executive officer (CEO) in September 2019. In a career spanning over two decades, he’s worked at places such as Lowe Lintas and Ernst&Young.

His last day is today (31 August 2021).

As per dentsu India’s official statement:

To stay ahead of the growth opportunities and potential we see for our clients and our teams we are moving forward into dentsu India 2.0.

This is crucial to realising our global ambition of becoming the most integrated network in the world. In the last year, and despite the pandemic, we have started to optimise our portfolio of brands into six global leadership brands, making us more agile and simpler for our clients to access our world-class capabilities and talents.

To accelerate this transformation, Ashish Bhasin, CEO, APAC and Chairman India, and Peter Huijboom, Global CEO, Media and Global Clients will assume interim, day-to-day leadership of dentsu India while the business completes its search for a successor to Anand Bhadkamkar, who leaves dentsu on August 31.

With this new structure, we are well-positioned to unlock higher levels of business performance, innovation, and solution-led strategies for our people and for our clients. Our ambitions and goals are interconnected, and this is the beginning of dentsu India 2.0’s new and transformed path to success.

Bhadkamkar’s exit is the biggest of the many senior-level executives who’ve left the group recently. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve reported the exits of Gautam Mehra, chief product and data officer, dentsu International and CEO, DAN Programmatic; Vivek Bhargava, head, dentsu Performance Group; Rubeena Singh, CEO, iProspect.