Prasanth Kumar, CEO, South Asia of GroupM Media (India) Pvt Ltd, has been elected as the president of the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) at its annual general body meeting.
Rana Barua, group CEO of Havas Group India, was elected vice-president of the association. Anupriya Acharya, outgoing president, will be the ex-officio member of the AAAI board for 2022-23.
“I am extremely honoured to be elected president of this prestigious association. Advertising is a dynamic and idea-driven industry. Collaboration with industry organisations will allow us to shape the industry in a progressive way that benefits everybody. I look forward to building synergies with like-minded people and organisations and I believe that we will be able to achieve our goals if we work together,” Prasanth said on the occasion.
He is a GroupM veteran with more than 25 years of experience having worked across the industry. He has also worked at Pepsi, The Hindu, The Media Edge & McCann Erickson before joining GroupM. He has also been vice president of AAAI from 2020 – 2022.
Acharya said it has been “a privilege to hold the office of president and take on the responsibilities that come with it for the last two years”.
The AAAI, a not-for-profit, industry-led and industry-managed trade association of advertising agencies, was formed in 1945.
Other elected members of the board:
Vishandas Hardasani (Matrix Publicities and Media India Pvt Ltd)
Kunal Lalani (Crayons Advertising Pvt Ltd)
Rohan Mehta (Kinnect Pvt Ltd)
Chandramouli Muthu Maitri (Advertising Works Pvt Ltd, Cochin)
Sridhar Ramasubramanian (Beehive Communications Pvt Ltd)
Shashidhar Sinha (Initiative Media India Pvt Ltd)
K Srinivas (Sloka Advertising Pvt Ltd, Hyderabad)
Vivek Srivastava (Innocean Worldwide Communications Pvt Ltd)