MAM
Havas Group India onboards Pritha Dasgupta as CMO
Mumbai: Havas Group India has further reinforced its leadership team with the appointment of Pritha Dasgupta as chief marketing officer (CMO), effective immediately. She will be based in Mumbai and report to Havas Group India, group CEO, Rana Barua.
“Dasgupta 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,” said the statement.
Welcoming Dasgupta on board, Rana Barua said, “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
“We have extremely ambitious plans of further expansion, acquisitions and creating a meaningful difference in the overall Indian media and advertising ecosystem,” he added.
Dasgupta is a media professional with over 15 years of work experience across marketing communications and journalism. She 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, Dasgupta 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.
Commenting on her new role, 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 realises 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.
MAM
Visa appoints Suresh Sethi as India country head
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.







