The agency has kicked off a restructuring exercise post the 26 per cent buyout of its India business from local partner Sandeep Goyal.
Since global ad major Dentsu Inc bought out the 26 per cent stake held by Sandeep Goyal-owned Mogae Consultants in its India business, the Japanese company has been preparing to fuel the next phase of growth. The challenge for the new management would be to strike the right balance between the parent company and its subsidiary, while maintaining the Indianness of its operations here.
For Dentsu, the first few years in India under the leadership of Goyal was a period of development. Now, all that remains of the relationship with its erstwhile partner is just the name and the sprawling 30,000 square feet office space at Mogae House in Gurgaon that still houses the Dentsu India Group (DIG).
The Tokyo-based ad agency, ranked among the top five advertising networks in the world, is now in full control of the Rs 1,200 crore Indian business comprising a network of agencies — Dentsu Communications, Dentsu Marcom, Denstu Creative Impact, Clickstreamers and Denstu Mediatech.
Seiichiro Hayata, acting chairman of DIG, says the restructuring exercise is already in motion. “For starters, we have realigned internal teams across our agencies to streamline operations. Secondly, we are supporting these teams with functional leads across planning, creative and overall operations.”
While Goyal continues to be part of the DIG board as founder-chairman, his two lieutenants, Gull Sen and Rajesh Aggarwal, who looked after the creative and operations of the India business, respectively, have stepped down. Another senior hand, Nitin Suri, the national creative director, has resigned to make way for Titus Upputuru, the former executive creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi, Delhi.
Hayata says the movement at the senior management level is normal during a transition. “Several new people are expected to join us.” This includes people from the Tokyo headquarters of the agency. While Nobuki Sakai has been appointed as the new chief financial officer at Dentsu, the new chief operating officer of Dentsu Marcom is Hiroshi Omata. "Clearly, Tokyo is keen to be in the driver's seat as far as the Indian business goes," says an agency head on the condition of anonymity.
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Typically, each of the three Dentsu full-service agencies has an “anchor client” — Dentsu Marcom has Honda, Dentsu Communications has Toyota and Dentsu Creative Impact has Maruti. The offices of these entities are located in different places to avoid conflict of interest, says Hayata. Besides, Dentsu has other Japanese and non-Japanese accounts such as Toshiba, Canon, Panasonic, Educomp, Aircel, Fedex and Acer among others. Hayata says the mix of Japanese and non-Japanese businesses will continue. “I don't think we will change the skew.”
The internal restructuring, according to Hayata, is not only aimed at reenergising the Indian business but also helping the group align operations with the global network . "The process of integration of our Indian business with the global network is well underway. Internal task force teams have been appointed and they are already working closely with our teams located in Tokyo."
The rigour with which the Japanese agency is approaching the restruturing and integration of the Indian business can be gauged from the following: While teams from the Tokyo headquarters have attended workshops in India, its Indian staff have often been inducted into network-level summits.
Advertisement industry experts say Dentsu is keen on growing its presence in emerging markets like India. It remains the stronger of the three Japanese agencies that have entered the country in recent years. The others are Hakuhodo, which has a tie-up with Percept, and ADK that forayed into the Indian market following a tie-up with JWT.
Globally, Dentsu has strengthened its presence in markets like the US, Europe and China. It remains the largest agency in the Japanese market and the second-largest ad market after the US.
