Ashish Bhasin retires from dentsu international, headed to Harvard

Ashish Bhasin, CEO - APAC and Chairman India, dentsu international, has retired from the group after a tenure of a little over 13 and a half years. Dentsu International has confirmed that Bhasin has sought early retirement and that today (November 12, 2021) is his last day with the group.

In a statement released, dentsu international said, “To manage this transition, Simon Jones, CFO APAC and Belli Mathanda, COO APAC will work closely with our global CEO, Wendy Clark, who will have a greater focus on the region during this time supported by the APAC Executive team.”

“This strong team is well placed to continue the positive transformation underway in the region as we simplify how we operate and bring together our leading capabilities in service of our clients in Creative, Media and CXM to realise our global ambition to be the most integrated agency network in the world,” the statement added.

In India, Peter Huijboom will continue his interim, day-to-day leadership of the business with the India leadership team, while dentsu is in the final stages of its search and appointment of a new CEO in India. Dentsu in its statement added that a successor to Bhasin will be announced in due course.

Commenting on his tenure at dentsu, Bhasin said, “I have had a wonderful 13+ years and have enjoyed leading dentsu India and dentsu APAC. In this journey, I was lucky to have a brilliant team, very supportive colleagues and have made some lovely friends for life. Dentsu is a great company and I wish them the very best.”

He further said that at this point he is unable to comment on his future plans, but in the meanwhile “I am really looking forward to going to Harvard for the Advanced Management Program, for which I have secured admission for the next semester”.

For most part of this year, dentsu India has been in the news for several senior level exits from the agency. When news surfaced in a section of the media a couple of months back about Bhasin’s retirement from the agency, he had rubbished such news as “baseless, unverified, wrong, and untrue”.