MAM
McCann wins GM account
MUMBAI: McCann Erickson has won the corporate and digital creative business for all of General Motors‘ brands in India.
Talking to Indiantelevision.com, General Motors India vice-president P Balendran said, “McCann will handle the creative and digital duties of all our brands in India. They will have a dedicated team working on our brands and the work has already started.”
Balendran, however, refused to comment on whether the account size amounted to Rs 1.5 billion.
The pitch process that went on for 2-3 months also involved Leo Burnett and Contract Advertising.
For the first time, General Motors India has decided to award the creative duties of all its brands to a single agency. Until now, the company had two agencies on its roster – Leo Burnett and Wieden+Kennedy.
Henceforth, McCann will now work on the creative business of GM‘s existing brands as well as on the forthcoming launches.
McCann had previously worked on Chevrolet nearly half a decade ago and is one of other global agencies that handle the brand.
The relationship between McCann and GM has been a very flirtatious one.
It all began in 2005, when McCann won the creative duties of GM’s car lines including Chevrolet Optra and new car launches — along with Rediffusion Y&R that took over Tavera and Chevrolet corporate business. Enterprise Nexus was the incumbent agency for Chevrolet Optra.
After spending almost three-and-a-half years in the relationship, GM decided to move its properties — until now with McCann to Wieden + Kennedy (W+K) in September 2009.
MUMBAI: In India’s fast-moving payments race, Visa has just swiped in a new leader. The company has named Suresh Sethi as its India country head, marking a key leadership shift as it sharpens its focus on digital payments growth in the market. Sethi steps into the role following his recent exit from Protean eGov Technologies, where he served as chief executive officer. He succeeds Sandeep Ghosh, who has moved on after more than four years at Visa to pursue an external opportunity.
The appointment comes at a time when Visa is doubling down on its expansion strategy across India and the wider region, deepening partnerships and accelerating adoption in an increasingly competitive digital payments ecosystem.
Sethi brings with him a broad, cross-market perspective shaped by decades of experience across corporate banking, retail financial services, mobile money and large-scale government technology initiatives. He began his career at Citigroup, where he spent 14 years working across India, Africa, South America and the United States, focusing on transaction banking services within the corporate bank.
His appointment signals a blend of institutional experience and market familiarity qualities that could prove critical as Visa navigates a landscape where fintech innovation, regulatory evolution and consumer adoption are all accelerating at once.
As digital payments in India continue to scale rapidly, the leadership change underscores a simple reality, in a market where every tap, scan and swipe counts, who leads the charge can matter just as much as the technology itself.
