Ajit Varghese

Ajit Varghese

CEO Maxus Asia Pacific at Maxus
Singapore, Singapore

Positions

CEO Maxus Asia Pacific
Maxus singapore
January 2014 - Present (10 years 3 months)
- Currently lead a team of 1200+rockstars Asia Pacific, spread across 17 countries including Motivator India.
- Key architect in "leading change" across APAC of integrating social into the core of media business, planning for actions, and believes future of media is in content and data integrated and delivered through the power of technology.
- He is part of Maxus Global Exco since 2008 and now part of Groupm APAC ExCo since 2014.
- Launched the Marketing Command Centre (MESH) as a tool of Maxus for its clients in collaboration with Vocanic. It helps clients reads environmental & brand health signals in real-time which is key to proactive marketing, Content and digital asset management center to serve and monitor content performance, Crisis management & customer loyalty management.
- Mandate spanning across 350+clients across platforms and diversified practices of Digital, Social, Insights, Content, Activation, Retail, Analytics and OOH & Finance. 25% of the team is from digital and diversified services
- Key clients include Loreal, Jetstar, Unicharm, Huawei, Subaru across the region apart from helping countries manage their local roaster of clients like Vodafone, Hero, Google, Titan, Olx.com in India, Shanghai Auto, DFYL, Pfizer, Bank of Communications in China & Aldi, Hungry Jacks, Fiat in Australia
Managing Director - South Asia
Mumbai, India
October 2006 - December 2013 (7 years 2 months)
- Grew Maxus India 5times in last 6 years in revenue. Fastest growing agency in India for 5years
- Rated by RECMA as the only “SUCCESSFUL & DOMINANT” profile agency in India, 3 years in a row
- Established Maxus as the Creative Media Shop in India. Most awarded agency in the country for last 3/4years. Rated No.1 agency in 4/5 Media Awards Industry forums. Created and led the Maxus culture of “creativitis” for last 5 years. Won lot of International recognition like at Cannes, FOMA, Mashable amongst others
- Largest digital media agency of India with >30mn USD billing. No.1 Digital agency of the year across all awards forums in 2012 – E4M, Campaign, Mobile Media awards with work even shortlisted in Mashable award in US
- Continue to retain Nokia, Vodafone, Google AORs with Maxus India, the only exception in the world against Global mandate
- Part of the Global Executive Committee of Maxus rolling out the new vision for 10 out of 10, CHANGE manifesto, PACE culture and Relationship media product. Also part of EXCO in Groupm India
- Amongst the Top 10 Most Influential in Media and the youngest agency head of the country.
- Created and evangelized new revenue streams of GroupM – advertising on DTH platform, managing biggest sporting event of India - IPL to actually consulting, buying and managing an IPL team (Deccan Chargers)
COO
Madison World
June 1999 - September 2006 (7 years 3 months)
- Started as planning head for Coca-Cola AOR for Madison in 1999 and by 2000 was overseeing planning and buying functions
- Soon headed the AOR from 2001-2003 leading to some change management in Coca-Cola business plans and plethora of initiatives creating impact and creativity in the Cola wars
- Expanded the mandate from 2004-2006 with Wins of McDonalds, Marico (FMCG), Asian Paints (no.1 in Paints), Cadburys, TVS (no.3 Indian 2-wheeler), Tata Tea (No.1 in hot beverages), Dominos, Axis Bank amongst others to set up the Madison Infinity division for Madison World
- Raised the equity of Madison in industry forums with most award wins under the Madison Infinity umbrella, and most importantly formation of great "winning" team and culture which continues to flourish even today.
Media Planner
Initiative Universal Media
September 1996 - June 1999 (2 years 9 months)
- Head of strategy planning for Rin (detergent brand) of Unilever. Involved at detergent category level for data modelling work with brand health measures leading to optimal advertising levels, franchise management, market investment decisions
- Led the change over of measurement metrics from Diary to People-meter, and implications thereby on planning for Lintas.
- Worked with CEO (Andre Purushotam) to push unification of TV measurement systems (TAM, INTAM in 1998-99) at industry level
Research Exec
IMRB International
June 1995 - August 1996 (1 year 2 months)
- Part of Team ITC research for market share tracking, brand price trade off studies, qualitative studies, other consumer research for the largest brand WILLS and higher categories including foreign brands
- Part of leading the biggest General Consumer survey (GCS) in India – Usage and attitude study for cigarettes with over 1.3lakh sample size in 1996
South Asia CEO & CEO Maxus India
London, United Kingdom

Education

MBA, Marketing & General Management

1993 - 1995 (2 years)

1989 - 1993 (4 years)

Std 10th, Science

1987 (1 year)

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