MAM
Vishal Nicholas to lead strategy for Dentsu Impact
Mumbai: dentsuMB (formerly Dentsu India) planning and strategy head Vishal Nicholas will now also lead strategy for Dentsu Impact, a dentsuMB company. Under this expanded mandate, Nicholas will manage planning & strategy – South, Mumbai, and Delhi for both the agencies. He will continue to report to dentsuMB Group CEO Sidharth Rao.
Armed with 16 years of experience, Nicholas has had stints at Lowe Lintas and McCann where he worked on Flipkart, Tata Tea’s JaagoRe platform, Myntra, TVS Motors, ITC Aashirvaad, and Britannia. He is a multiple EFFIE award winner across the India and APAC regions, said the agency on Monday.
Speaking on the elevation, Sidharth Rao said, “As we continue to strengthen and reshape our creative offering in the Indian market, we needed a planning leader who has experience with both traditional and new-age businesses; and Vishal was the obvious choice to steer the strategy product for both dentsuMB and Dentsu Impact.”
Vishal Nicholas added, “Ever since I joined dentsu, I’ve always been excited about the Eastern approach to building brands with simplicity and second-order thinking at its core. With dentsuMB, the combination of the East and West make it even more compelling. And with Dentsu Impact’s fantastic roster of clients, I look forward to achieving greater business outcomes for them.”
For the record, Dentsu Impact and dentsuMB are part of the dentsuMB Group in India that also houses the agencies Dentsu Webchutney, Dentsu One, and Taproot Dentsu.
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.
