Arup Barua joins Publicis Groupe India as associate director

DELHI: Arup Barua is not hanging around. The content strategist and media manager, who has spent more than a decade navigating India’s fast-moving advertising landscape, has joined Publicis Groupe India as associate director, content marketing, effective June 2026.

The move caps a career that has taken Barua through some of the industry’s most prominent addresses. Most recently director of client servicing for influencer marketing at Cheil India, where he led a team of 12 and built a data-driven approach to word-of-mouth for Samsung, he spent nearly five years before that at EssenceMediacom, part of GroupM, as senior content and innovation manager. There he handled media planning, account management and end-to-end execution for brands including iQOO, Vivo, Airtel, Vedantu, Google and Bharti AXA.

Earlier stints include senior account manager at Eleve Media, the influencer marketing platform, where his client roster ran from Dabur and Honda to Pepsi, Nestlé and Bacardi, and roles at Dynamis Digital and Brand Visage Communications that sharpened his instincts across social media, digital strategy and BTL execution.

At Publicis Groupe, Barua takes on content strategy, brand strategy and allied disciplines at one of the world’s largest communications groups, with a mandate that reflects both the scale of the organisation and the direction the industry is heading.

“This feels like a natural next step into a larger arena,” Barua said. “Looking forward to doing meaningful work, learning from brilliant people, and continuing to build things that matter.”

Twelve years, seven organisations, one clear trajectory: Barua has always been moving toward this. The only question now is what he builds next.