Saurabh Varma quits Publicis Groupe; Anupriya Acharya takes over as CEO, South Asia

Publicis Groupe has announced the appointment of Anupriya Acharya as chief executive officer, South Asia. 

 

Saurabh Varma, currently CEO of Publicis Communications has decided to pursue other career opportunities, and will be leaving Publicis Groupe after 17 years.

 

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. 

  

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 group’s operations. She will be supported by the India leadership team, comprising all the agency CEOs, including creative, media, digital, influence, data and technology. 

 

“Anupriya 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 group leadership is a catalyst to accelerate our investments in India. I am truly looking forward to partnering with her in this new role.” said Loris Nold, CEO, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, Publicis Groupe.

 

“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 endeavors,” he added.

 

Acharya said, “It's a great honor to get this mandate and I 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. I look forward to building on this momentum and innovate further with new products and approaches.”