MAM
Havas hires Contract’s Chakraborty to lead creative partner Benckiser team
MUMBAI: Sanghamitra ‘Shong’ Chakraborty has joined Havas Media’s Gurgaon operations as the senior vice president and business head. She will lead the integrated Reckitt Benckiser (RB) team at Havas India, which is the creative partner for many of RB India’s brands.
It is also a hub of creative work on three major RB brands – Harpic, Mortein and Veet – for the world other than for Europe and North America.
Chakraborty joins Havas from Contract Advertising. In over 18 years in advertising and brand management, she has worked on several major global and home-grown brands such as GSK, Tata Docomo, Nestle, Maruti Suzuki, Motorola, Dabur, National Geographic etc. across stints with Grey Worldwide, TBWA, Publicis and Contract.
Havas India CEO Nirmalya Sen said – “Anyone who has worked with Shong – clients and colleagues alike – will agree that she isn’t just a ‘make-it-happen’ person. She is a ‘make-everyone-happen’ person. Her energy is infectious, as is her ability to pull off the impossible.”
Chakraborty said: “It is a new experience to work in an environment where the offline and online worlds, as well as the creative and media worlds, have been woven seamlessly into one Village, held together with the brand’s philosophy of ‘Better Together’. My other reason, really, was fairly selfish, Havas and RB gave me the opportunity to be an origin market for some of the biggest brands in the FMCG space, and that to me is challenging and should be rewarding at the same time.”
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.
