Nikhil Dey quits GBM for Weber Shandwick India, will report to APAC CEO

 11th December 2018    PR News 
 Paarul Chand

Nikhil Dey, long time GBM senior executive, is joining Weber Shandwick India as vice chairman. Currently serving out his notice period, Dey will join Weber Shandwick in early 2019, most likely by in February 2019. He reports directly to Baxter Jolly, APAC CEO for Weber Shandwick.

Valerie Pinto, CEO, Weber Shandwick India, said that the two of them ( Dey and Pinto) will work together as partners to chart out the next level of growth for Weber Shandwick India for the next 5 years, in keeping with rising expectation from the PR business to handle a wide range of services from content creation, digital and stakeholder management. 

Deepshikha Dharamraj, currently the chief business growth officer at Genesis Burson -Marsteller will be elevated to the post of managing director at GBM. 

This is the second high profile exit at GBM in the last six months, in September Genesis Burson-Marsteller COO, Atul Sharma had stepped down to head Ruder Finn's operations in India. At that point, no replacement for Sharma was announced.

Prema Sagar, founder and CEO, Genesis Burson -Marsteller, told PRmoment India that, "Both Nikhil and Atul wanted to try something new, something more after being at GBM for well over a decade and I can understand that. In an age where people quit just after two years, a large part of GBM staffers stay with us for a long time. And in fact, many of our colleagues have gone on to do really well in other organisations as well."

In March 2018, WPP announced that Cohn & Wolfe and Burson-Marsteller will merge globally to form Burson Cohn & Wolfe, a move that will impact India as well. At that point,  commenting on what would happen with GBM and Cohn & Wolfe Six Degrees, Cohn & Wolfe international spokesperson had told PRmoment India that, "In India, the firms will co-exist separately as Cohn & Wolfe Six Degrees remains on an earn-out."

Market sources said the two exits have nothing to do with the anticipated mergers, saying that due to the earn-out period for Cohn & Wolfe Six Degrees, the merger will not progress till 2020 in India.

Sources also told PRmoment India that the new brand image designs for Burson Cohn & Wolfe, are expected to land in January 2019, although the BCW logo has already been released in September 2018.