Ad strategist

Cheil India has announced the appointment of Neeraj Bassi as chief strategy officer. Bassi will be responsible for the planning and strategy function across the agency's business divisions. With over 19 years of experience in connecting brands and consumers, Bassi has earlier been associated with Ogilvy, JWT and McCann. He has also helped develop award winning campaigns for brands such as Coca-Cola, Cadbury, Voltas, BMW, Honda, Philips, HSBC, Max Life, Vistara and WeChat.

Car techie

Car maintenance and car repairs provider GetCarXpert.com has appointed Lalit Bhasin as chief technology officer. He will spearhead technical operations at the company and will also play an instrumental role in improving customer experience and other technical operations. Bhasin has expertise in managing multiple full stack products, product design, scoping, testing and implementation.

Mobile platform head

Paytm, India's mobile payment and commerce platform, has appointed ex-head of Alibaba Group Holding's wholesale business Bhushan Patil as president. Bhushan's key areas at Paytm would include building company's cross border commerce. Before joining Paytm, Patil was handling operations of Alibaba.com. He was instrumental in leading new initiatives for global markets business development across small and medium enterprises-linked associations, banks and government trade organisations, and e-companies. At Alibaba.com he is credited with the launch of B2B Trade-Trust products across 50 countries in Asia/Europe and Americas & was instrumental developing new India plans for Alibaba.com B2B business.

Agency shift

Havas Worldwide India has appointed Arindam Sengupta as president, West. He joins the agency from Ogilvy Mumbai and will replace Shavon Barua, who left Havas some months ago. Sengupta has over 18 years of experience in advertising, having worked with agencies such as Lowe Lintas, DDB Mudra and TBWA in the past. He has worked on brands from various categories such as FMCG, fashion, technology, durables, healthcare and e-commerce.