MAM
MPG India appoints Ruma Sengupta as director of strategy
MUMBAI: Havas Media’s flagship agency, MPG India, has appointed Ruma Sengupta to the post of director of strategy.
Sengupta will report to Havas Media South Asia CEO Anita Nayyar and work closely with the regional strategy team based out Singapore.
She will be based out of Mumbai and will work closely with MPG’s four key offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai.
Sengupta will take charge of the agency’s strategic offering and product development in keeping with the vision of ‘leading new thinking’. She will also take custodianship of Havas Media’s proprietary tools and processes.
Sengupta brings with her 15 years of experience across verticals like marketing, branding, sales, strategy, MR and analytics. She comes in from Synovate where she handled the post of director of business insight and was responsible for key international clients across FMCG categories. She has also worked as business head for IMRB International in the past in addition to working in senior marketing roles at Adlabs Films Limited owned by Reliance ADAG and United Spirits Limited at UB Group.
Her longest stint has been with Ranbaxy Global Consumer Healthcare where she launched OTC & DTC business and managed it successfully through marketing and sales-distribution.
Nayyar said, “Havas Media is well-known for the high quality of its strategic product and tools and Ruma has the right credentials and attitude to take control of our strategic offering. Her flair is evident from her extraordinary background having worked with top research agencies like Synovate and IMRB. Her previous experience in spearheading marketing and innovation capabilities with brands is a plus.”
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.
