Digital to be 50% of our India business, says Ketchum Global CEO

Ketchum Sampark, the Indian arm of Omnicom Group’s Ketchum Inc, a global marketing and corporate communications consultancy, feels that the share of digital business can rise up to 50 per cent of its India revenues in the coming years, while the rest would come from the traditional public relations (PR) business. 

Meanwhile, the global chief executive officer (CEO) also indicated there were no plans to merge the Omnicom Group’s PR networks in India unlike what it did in Singapore and some European countries. Currently, the digital vertical is roughly 15 per cent of the India business. 

Speaking to Business Standard, Barri Friedman Rafferty, president and CEO of Ketchum, said that in most other countries where it operates in, the share of the digital business is roughly around 40 per cent, the rest from the traditional businesses. “In India, we see there is potential to grow the share of digital business versus the traditional in a 50:50 revenue share over the coming years,” she said. 

Rafferty did not wish to give a timeline, but she added, “India is evolving now to being more digital and social. It’s still a little more dependent on print than some markets.”  Ketchum Sampark had launched its digital media business here in end-2011. It offers an entire gamut — from web design and video production to multimedia development to help clients build engagement with their audiences on the digital media. 

Esty Pujadas, partner and president, Ketchum International, said India has a lot of potential as far as digital consumption goes. “India as a market has enormous potential and continues to evolve into one of the best in online consumption. From a population perspective, it is going to surpass China in a few years, and mobility has grown with time. India is going to be one of the biggest data consumption countries,” said Pujadas. 

It, however, does not count its influencer management (marketing strategy) as part of its digital business. Ketchum operates across 13 verticals, the top ones being analytics, digital, social, issues and crises, apart from influencer management. 

The global agency, which has expertise in the banking and financial services vertical, is looking to add more verticals in India. It has already started focusing on health care and industrial businesses, etc. Rafferty said there was some business re-balancing going on here. 

Meanwhile, Rafferty also clarified that in India there were no plans to merge the Omnicom Group’s PR networks in India. “India and China are big markets for us and we see the Ketchum brand standing strong here. India is a huge growth market for us. It is growing economically and population wise. We see there is a lot of opportunity for us as a Ketchum brand in this market,” she said, ruling out any merger. She added that it has mostly been done in smaller markets to create operational synergy. 

In 2017, Omnicom had merged its three global PR networks — FleishmanHillard, Ketchum, and Porter Novelli — in four European countries. It did the same in Singapore a year later.  Talking about growing inorganically in India, Rafferty said they were not looking at any big acquisitions as such. “We can grow our digital and social (businesses), and we may bring in smaller groups of people where it helps. But we are not looking at big acquisitions. We are always looking at agencies that we can marry and add to our arsenal,” she said.