Jarek Ziebinski, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Leo Burnett Asia Pacific announced today, the promotion of Saurabh Varma, currently CEO of Leo Burnett India, to CEO for the agency’s operations in South Asia.
The appointment, effective as of November 17th 2015, sees Varma charged with responsibilities for Leo Burnett agencies across Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
“South Asia is an important region for Leo Burnett from our global strategy perspective. With Saurabh’s appointment, we want to further enhance connectivity of our operations across these dynamic markets to drive business growth for our clients and the agency” said Ziebinski.
Continued Ziebinski,” Having been at Leo Burnett for close to a decade, Saurabh has consistently proven himself in his roles as the regional chief strategy officer and recently as CEO of Leo Burnett India. He is without a doubt, the best candidate to lead our South Asia operations to the next level.”
Varma added, “We have incredible operations across Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. I look forward to working with some incredibly talented leaders to build new age specialist functions across all markets and create larger futures for our clients.”
Prior to his role as CEO of Leo Burnett India, Varma was the Chief Strategy Officer for Asia-Pacific where he oversaw all heads of strategy and planning directors in the region. Since he took over the helm as CEO of Leo Burnett India two years ago, the agency has consistently delivered double-digit business growth. Under his leadership, Leo Burnett also doubled the size of Indigo Digital Consulting’s business and successfully expanded its operations, launching Indigo consulting in New Delhi. He also launched Leo Experience across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, and more recently shopper practice in Mumbai. As a result of his work, Leo Burnett now has a strong leadership team across all specialisations in India and solid plan for growth in the next three years. Varma was also instrumental in establishing the new affiliate partnership in Pakistan with AdCom, one of the largest independent advertising agencies in the market.