Ashish Bhasin moves on from dentsu

Dentsu international has confirmed that Ashish Bhasin, CEO dentsu APAC & Chairman India is seeking early retirement from dentsu after 13 years with the business. It is his last day today.

"We will announce a successor in due course. To manage this transition, Simon Jones, CFO APAC & Belli Mathanda, COO APAC will work closely with our global CEO, Wendy Clark, who will have a greater focus on the region during this time supported by the APAC Executive team," the official announcement said.

The news came after an exodus of top-level management seen by Dentsu India in the last 6 months. This includes key names such as Anand Bhadkamkar, Bhargava, Rubeena Singh, Shamsuddin Jasani, Haresh Nayak, Sahil Arora, Santosh Padhi, and more. The exits came in the background of the global restructuring announced by Dentsu Internation. This included bringing down the number of CEOs. Dentsu India was also plagued by a few corruption accusations during this period.

"This strong team is well placed to continue the positive transformation underway in the region as we simplify how we operate and bring together our leading capabilities in service of our clients in Creative, Media and CXM to realise our global ambition to be the most integrated agency network in the world," the announcement further read.

In an official statement, Ashish Bhasin said, "I have had a wonderful 13+ years and have enjoyed leading dentsu India and dentsu APAC. In this journey, I was lucky to have a brilliant team, very supportive colleagues, and have made some lovely friends for life. Dentsu is a great company and I wish them the very best. I am unable to comment on my future plans for now but in the meanwhile, I am really looking forward to going to Harvard for the Advanced Management Program, for which I have secured admission for the next semester.”