GREY Group India appoints Anusha Shetty as chairman & group CEO

Promotes Sandipan Bhattacharyya to MD & CCO

New York headquartered global advertising and marketing agency GREY Group announced an organisational change of its Indian arm on Tuesday. It named Anusha Shetty as chairman and group CEO of GREY Group India and promoted Sandipan Bhattacharyya into the role of Managing Director & Chief Creative Officer (CCO).

Meanwhile, Yashaswini Samat, the current CEO will move to Singapore to take up a senior integrated role for WPP-GREY. She will continue to report to Nirvik Singh, Grey Group's global COO and Chairman & CEO, Grey Asia, Middle East and Africa. GREY Global is part of the WPP Group of companies. 

In her role as the CEO of AutumnGrey, Shetty has delivered several award-winning online digital campaigns. Shetty's career graph spans across India and the Silicon Valley. She co-founded Autumn Worldwide, a specialised digital marketing firm, in 2005 along with Abhay Rajankar. Grey had acquired a majority stake in Autumn Worldwide in October 2018. 

A 20-year veteran in the communications industry, Shetty began her marketing career with Lowe Lintas in 1994. She has worked on multiple brands including Intel, Titan, Unilever and Honeywell. 

GREY said Shetty will work closely with Singh to ensure a seamless transition. Singh felt that this is a 'game-changing' moment for GREY India and that Shetty is the right person to take the agency to the next level with her experience and business acumen. 

Shetty commented, “Convergence as a topic is not new. But to see this in action, driving value for our clients and our end consumers, is a dream for all of us. The breakdown of communication silos is the only way to create a future agency model and I am delighted to lead this journey with Sandipan.”

Bhattacharyya was GREY's chief creative officer and has been promoted to MD and CCO. He has been part of a winning team for multiple Lions at Cannes, India’s first D&AD Yellow Pencil in Design, a Grand Prix and over a dozen metals at Spikes, Adfest, One Show and several Effies. In addition. With over 20 years of experience, he has also worked at BBDO India, Enterprise Nexus and Saatchi & Saatchi prior to Grey. 

The newly created role of creative leader as managing director signals GREY’s vision of putting creative front and centre of its growth story. Bhattacharyya said that it was a 'perfect blend of creativity, technology and data' happening at GREY. 

Commenting on Bhattacharyya's elevation, Singh said, "Sandi is extremely talented and has been instrumental in taking GREY’s creativity to a global level. His creative direction and storytelling expertise is a conversation starter and his campaigns are found in the middle of pop culture."