Avian Media rejigs its leadership team

Girish Balachandran has been elevated to Chief Strategy Officer; Neha Mehrotra and Shalmana Tendulkar have been made Regional Heads for Avian North and West, respectively

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | July 15, 2015

(L-R) Girish Balachandran, Neha Mehrotra and Shalmana Tendulkar

Avian Media recently announced new roles for its leadership team as it prepares to take on new growth from existing and new clients.

Girish Balachandran has been promoted as Chief Strategy Officer. In the last eight months at Avian Media, Balachandran has held the responsibility for marquee client relationships, winning new business and championing LEAP, an agency-wide, employee-led movement to build a culture of achieving unreasonable results. In his new role, Balachandran will continue building a growth roadmap for the agency, including incubating newer business units – Digital & Content Marketing and CSR, Advocacy and Development sector work. Prior to joining Avian Media, he had served as Europe, Middle East and Africa Client Development Director at Waggener Edstrom and worked with Ketchum as a Board Director in London.

Neha Mehrotra, an Avian Media veteran, has been appointed as Regional Head for North. She is one of the first employees of Avian Media and recently completed 11 years with the company. She has helped build a robust team in Delhi, looking after key clients across aviation and defense, consumer electronics, automotive and e-commerce among others. In her new role, Mehrotra will be responsible for leading strategy and creating standards and processes to ensure a consistency in service for large Indian and multinational clients as well as manage operations for Avian Media in north India.

Shalmana Tendulkar has taken on the reins of Avian West as Regional Head. With over 18 years of experience, she joined Avian Media in January 2014 to lead its consumer practice out of Mumbai. In her new role, Tendulkar will also oversee operations for Pune and Mumbai offices and ensure seamless quality in client servicing across its corporate, consumer, and technology and healthcare practices. Prior to Avian Media, she has worked at Genesis Burson Marsteller and as an independent communications consultant in India.

Subramaniam M continues leading operations for Avian Media in the South as Regional Head of its business across offices in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Commenting on the new structure, Nitin Mantri, CEO, Avian Media, said, “Brands in India are increasingly looking for agencies that can understand the role of communications within a broad stakeholder environment. By uniting our functions under single regional heads, we're bringing together the best mix of expertise and experience to bear on client challenges in an integrated way, beyond the silos of practices and functions. This new realignment will help us not only focus better to run the business and also integrate teams better within and across offices.”

The firm continues to have Nikhil Khanna as MD and Nitin Mantri as CEO at its helm. In the last year, Avian Media won 48 new clients, including BMW, Sony, BlaBlaCar and Sesame Workshop.

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