MAM
Havas Creative Group India names Debpriyo Bhattacherjee as EVP & Planning head-north
Mumbai: Havas Creative Group India has appointed Debopriyo (Debo) Bhattacherjee as EVP & planning Head – North effective immediately.
In his new role, Bhattacherjee will be responsible for providing strategic guidance to Havas Creative with a special focus on all brands of Reckitt and a portfolio of brands from the Dabur stable. “He will also be spearheading clients like Suzuki, Norton, Fortis, William Grants, ITC, and working closely with the senior leadership team to drive new client acquisitions and ensuring seamless adoption of the process of integration and collaboration across the group,” the agency announced on Monday.
He will be based out of the Gurgaon office and will be reporting to Havas Group India’s chief strategy officer Neeraj Bassi.
A strategic planner with 17 years of work experience, Bhattacherjee has worked with several agencies in India and Southeast Asia including Ogilvy, Dentsu, DDB, and McCann. He also served as the head of strategy planning for over three years in Havas at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His expertise lies in solving business problems by sparking and nurturing creative possibilities. Bhattacherjee has worked on a multitude of blue-chip accounts, namely, Unilever, Danone, Mondelez, L’Oréal, Coke, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Diageo, SABMiller, Carlsberg, Maxis, AXA, ICICI, PETRONAS, and Tesco, among others.
“Debo has both the experience and knowledge of handling brands across a wide range of categories. He has been part of the Havas network earlier and understands the culture of Integration that Havas offers to its clients. His unique perspectives and ideas will undoubtedly increase our abilities to produce interesting work for our client portfolio,” said Havas Creative Group India- president, Manas Lahiri.
On his new role, Bhattacherjee said, “For me, it is a homecoming to a network that I admire. So, with the change in consumer behaviour especially post the pandemic, the endeavour will be to keep working on creating differentiated strategies for all the leading brands of Reckitt, Dabur, Suzuki, and many others. I’m looking forward to working with the dynamic team of Havas Village India.”
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.
