MAM
Yusuf Hatia takes charge as MD, FleishmanHillard
MUMBAI: FleishmanHillard (FH), the global communication firm has elevated Yusuf Hatia to managing director, India. Hatia in his new position will be responsible for deciding the strategic direction for the agency while also continuing to provide the high-level strategic communications counsel to corporations and organizations.
Hatia is a founding team member of the company, which entered the market in 2007, having its first office in Maharashtra.
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“Yusuf Hatia has been a cornerstone of FH in India. He has been a key factor in tripling our offices, instrumental in finding and supporting an impressive and fast-growing portfolio of clients and essential to the mentoring of a close-knit team of communications professionals,” said FleishmanHillard‘s Asia Pacific president Lynne Anne Davis.
“Over the past 12 months, he has won an impressive calling of new clients. He is the ideal candidate to take on the leadership mantle to take us into our next phase of growth,” informed Davis.
Hatia, in his earlier stint, worked as managing director of client service, India. Pior to that, he was also managing director of FH‘s Mumbai office, where he provided strategic communications advice to a broad range of clients.
Hatia also heads the agency‘s Majlis offering, a specialty service created to assist corporations looking to build and protect their reputation with the Muslim community. He brings an international perspective to all his engagements, having worked previously in the United Kingdom and the Middle East.
FleishmanHillard is part of Diversified Agency Services, a division of Omnicom Group Inc. and offers public relations, public affairs, marketing, paid media and transmedia and social content.
MAM
Sameer Nair shares heartfelt note as he exits Applause Entertainment
After nine years building the streamer’s content engine, one of India’s best-known TV men is moving on
MUMBAI: Sameer Nair is out. The chief executive of Applause Entertainment, the content studio backed by Kumar Mangalam Birla’s media empire, has announced his departure after nearly nine years at the helm, closing the chapter on one of Indian entertainment’s more quietly consequential careers.
Nair, who built Applause from the ground up in its current avatar, oversaw a slate that spanned Indian originals and international adaptations, threading together a hub-and-spoke business model that partnered with streaming platforms, broadcasters and production houses alike. The results were uneven, as they always are in content, but the ambition was not.
In a post on LinkedIn, Nair was generous to his outgoing patron. He thanked Birla for being an “inspirational boss and a great patron of the arts,” and signed off with a cheerful “Au Revoir” and a promise to remain Applause’s biggest cheerleader. Whether that sentiment survives the next chapter remains to be seen.
No successor has been named. Applause Entertainment did not immediately comment.
Nair built the machine. Now someone else has to run it — and in a streaming market that is simultaneously consolidating and convulsing, that is no small ask.
