Taproot India beefs up team with two senior appointments

Taproot India has appointed Ninad Umargekar as Head of Strategic Planning. He had spent a few months at Famous before deciding to join Taproot. After studying Mathematics and doing an MBA, Umargekar worked with IMRB in quantitative research followed by six years at Lowe. At Lowe, he started with channel planning and then moved to brand planning working on a wide variety of brands like Lifebuoy, Hit, BookmyShow, and Finolex, among many others.

Meanwhile, Ayesha Ghosh has joined Taproot as General Manager. In her previous assignment, she was heading the Mumbai office of Contract where she spent 14 years. At Contract, Ghosh was involved with the integrated communication planning on brands like Shoppers Stop, Asian Paints, Cadbury and Star Plus, among others. She also worked closely with the Design, Digital and Core Consulting divisions of Contract.

Commenting on Umargekar’s appointment, Agnello Dias, Chairman and Co-founder, Taproot India, said, “Strategic planning is a key discipline that we are focusing on and Ninad’s arrival helps us take a significant step forward in that respect. He has a sharp mind and the ability to be precise with people observations. A trait we respect and admire as that is what has seen us produce some really powerful work in the past.”

Umesh Shrikhande, CEO, Taproot India, added here, “To add to our bandwidth and indeed to add more sharpness, energy, innovative thinking and depth to our strategic planning process, it was crucial to get an agile and eclectic strategic mind like Ninad. He is someone who sees strategy as an energising enabler of good creative ideas. A good team player, mentor and collaborator, Ninad is a happy addition to the talent pool of Taproot.”

On joining Taproot, Umargekar said, “Taproot’s creative product has been stellar because there already existed great strategic thinking behind it. Strategy is more a state of mind than a department, but its value increases when it becomes visible in organisation culture, in conversations and in power points. I look forward to building a strong team and a visible strategic culture at Taproot to further its reputation as one of India’s most impactful agencies.” 

On Ghosh’s appointment, Shrikhande said, “At Taproot, the endeavour is keep adding value to the brands entrusted to us. Strengthening our relationships, growing our talented people, adding sharpness to our counsel and overall adding more depth to everything we do. And that is where hiring senior talent like Ayesha Ghosh becomes important. Her high levels of maturity, cross category experience, her strong people-team skills and her bias for good ideas will mean a happy and meaningful addition to our bandwidth.”

“Like any start-up, we’ve been bottom heavy for the first few years of our existence. Over the last year, we’ve scaled up our operations and also focused on getting talented and seasoned senior members of the team in place. Ayesha is a valuable find for us in that regard. She brings on board a wealth of experience across a wide range of categories and most importantly, seemed to vibe with our culture the most. We look forward to drawing from her rich repertoire of talent and producing some really interesting work together,” said Dias.

On her new role, Ghosh said, “Apart from the draw of working with crackerjack creative talent, the ‘start-up’ culture was attractive to me. This is an agency with no flab, where everyone is carrying his/her weight. The relaxed atmosphere, combined with serious intent is the ideal incubator for creativity. Something that I am sure must be working for clients with a serious bias for good ideas. And most of all, after having worked for close to two decades now, I just want to work with nice people and this agency is brimming over with them.”
 

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