Havas Group India appoints Pritha Dasgupta as Chief Marketing Officer

She will be based in Mumbai and report to Rana Barua, Group CEO, Havas Group India.

Havas Group India has further reinforced its leadership team with the appointment of Pritha Dasgupta as chief marketing officer, effective immediately. She will be based in Mumbai and report to Rana Barua, Group CEO, Havas Group India.

In her new role, Pritha will be driving the marketing and communications function of the Group and all the network companies and will be working closely with the senior leadership team in India and the global marketing and communications team.

Pritha is a media professional with over 15 years of work experience across marketing communications and journalism. Pritha began her career in business journalism in 2005, following which she worked with leading publications, including Afaqs, Financial Express, CNBC-TV 18 Storyboard, Campaign India, and The Economic Times, through the next decade. In 2016, she made the transition from journalism to corporate communications by launching the function for IPG Mediabrands India, where her most recent role was that of Senior Director, Marketing & Communications. During her five-year stint at IPG Mediabrands, Pritha worked closely with all the agencies under the IPG Mediabrands India network. Apart from leading the network’s Marketing and Communications function, Pritha worked closely with several other divisions of IPG Mediabrands India, including Human Resources, CSR, DE&I, Training and Development, Finance, Administration, building strong expertise and equity in the agency network structure.

Commenting on Pritha’s appointment, Rana Barua, Group CEO, Havas Group India, said, “Havas Group has rapidly grown, both in size and in stature, in the last few years. With over 10 companies, 1000+ people, we have extremely ambitious plans of further expansion, acquisitions and creating a meaningful difference in the overall Indian media and advertising ecosystem.”

“As a group CMO, her vast experience and in-depth knowledge of the media ecosystem will prove to be invaluable to our network. She is a highly accomplished journalist and a professional with effective leadership and people skills. We are all thrilled to have her on board and look forward to a totally new way of marketing and communication in today’s times,” he added.

Commenting on her new role, Pritha Dasgupta said, “It’s hard to define the dynamic transformation the advertising and the marketing industry has gone through in the last decade, especially in the space of martech. This led to a huge transformation in the way networks built their communications strategies.”

“The industry is once again going through tectonic shifts, and Havas Group India is the only advertising network in the country that has created the role of a CMO. The visionary leadership at Havas Group India realizes that only companies with the most impactful stories can own and lead this metamorphosis. That’s where I come in. I am extremely grateful to Rana and the entire team at Havas Group India for entrusting me to tell their stories,” she added.

A post-graduate in History from Jadavpur University Kolkata, Pritha loves cooking, making handmade soaps, spending time with her 9-year-old boy, and collecting snow globes from around the world. She is also a stickler for news and movies.