Anupriya Acharya appointed CEO, South Asia, Publicis Groupe; Saurabh Varma moves on

Saurabh Varma, currently CEO of Publicis Communications has decided to move on from Publicis Groupe. He has decided to pursue other career opportunities and will be leaving Publicis Groupe after 17 years. The Groupe has announced the appointment of Anupriya Acharya as Chief Executive Officer, South Asia.

In this newly created role, Acharya will be leading Publicis Groupe's country agenda across India and Sri Lanka. Her primary responsibilities will include driving greater integration across the Groupe’s operations to deliver end to end marketing transformation to existing clients while winning the trust of new ones, as well as cultivating and attracting the best talent across agencies and practices. She will be supported by the India leadership team, comprising all the agencies’ CEOs, including creative, media, digital, influence, data and technology.

Commenting on Acharya’s appointment, Loris Nold, CEO, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, Publicis Groupe, said, “I am thrilled with Anupriya’s appointment. She and I have been working together for a number of years, I am really impressed with her achievements to date and I cannot think of a better leader to take on this extremely important responsibility. India is an absolutely critical market for us, one of the very best talent pools in the world, with strong innovation and a great resonance well into the region and beyond. It is a strategic priority for us, and shifting to a Groupe leadership is a catalyst to accelerate our investments in India. Over the past three years, we have made significant progress in making the ‘Power of One’ a reality in India, with great examples of collaboration for the benefit of our clients and talents and having Anupriya at the helm is very natural. I am truly looking forward to partnering with her in this new role.”

On Varma’s movement from the Groupe, Nold said, “Varma has decided to pursue other career opportunities, and will be leaving Publicis Groupe after 17 years. In the past few years, we have built very strong momentum at Publicis Communications and I want to thank Saurabh for his partnership and wish him good luck in his future endeavours”.

Acharya started her career at Ogilvy in 1994 and worked at a number of agencies before joining Publicis Groupe in 2013 as CEO of Zenith. In 2016, she was elevated to CEO of Publicis Media where her mandate encompassed all the Groupe media agencies including Zenith, Starcom, and Performics. In this stint she has more than doubled the operations in three years through expanding capabilities in digital media and services, analytics, consulting, content, commerce and adding new clients including Parle, Fiat, Ola, GSK, KrafHeinz, Lenovo, Motorola, Nykaa amongst others.

Acharya said, “It’s a great honour to get this mandate and am both excited and humbled by getting this opportunity. We have such an incredibly talented leadership team in India, who has been the very reason for our success over the years. And moving to the ‘Power of One’ model that puts our clients at the centre of our Groupe offering has infused unmatched vitality and energy across the entire organisation. I look forward to building on this momentum and innovate further with new products and approaches”

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