Proximity India announced key recruitments, strengthens national team

Samrat Ray as Creative Director (Digital), Divya Uttam as Digital Strategist. Karan Bhandari as Sr. Account Director (Digital) and Poonam Dhadwal as Account Director (Activation).

Samrat moves from SapientNitro where he was working on global portfolio of brands. He has also worked with Webchutney and Rediffusion Y&R (Digital).

Divya moves from 20-20 Social where she was working as social media expert and was part of the core strategic team.

Karan moves from Solution Digitas where he was spearheading new business and was responsible for winning key accounts like Microsoft, Nestle and NIIT. He was also instrumental in setting up Razorfish in India under the Vivaki leadership.

Poonam moved from Evolve Entertainment Marketing & Solutions where she was responsible for managing operations for all activations at national level. She has also worked with Whizcraft and Solution Digitas in the past.

Proximity India has offices in Mumbai and Delhi and recently partnered with Aviva Life Insurance for its "Great Wall of Education" initiative. This initiative was rolled out in Kolkata and Chennai last month and helped collect over 580,000 books for the underprivileged children.

Proximity has also been working closely with other BBDO clients in India and played a very important role in conceptualization of Quaker's mission to make India heart healthy and have now taken the mission to key target market with on-ground ideas.

The agency is focused on providing solutions and initiatives that are designed to change individual consumer behavior by creating "acts not ads".

On the new appointments, Ajai Jhala, CEO, BBDO/Proximity India said, "We are investing in recruiting a new breed of professionals who believe in the power of interactive ideas that impact behavior and help brands create conversations in consumer communities".

Ranjeev Vij, VP & Head ' Proximity India added, "At BBDO/Proximity we have best in class skills to develop breakthrough behavior changing ideas and with appointment of four senior talent we are expanding our unfair share of talent in the market to offer best in class thinking and execution to our clients using our collaborative partner model."

In India, Proximity clients will also get access to proprietary strategic tools such as Antenna - a social media online brand reputation management tool and Seventh Sense - designed to optimize effectiveness of digital campaigns.

Later this year, Proximity also plans to launch their proprietary Digital Lab Initiative in India, which is a multi-faceted program, designed to drive digital thought leadership and to provide a significant added value service to its clients.