Prasanth Kumar: India set to climb WPP Media’s global ranks with responsible growth

When WPP rebranded its media investment arm GroupM as WPP Media earlier this year, the move was pitched as more than a cosmetic shift. For Prasanth Kumar, chief executive of WPP Media South Asia, the change represents an effort to reframe how the company operates in a media industry defined by rapid shifts in consumer behavior, commerce and technology.

Read more: Exclusive: WPP Media's Prasanth Kumar on India, AI, accountability, growth and transformation

“It's a quite a fast evolving landscape, right? This is a phrase, for the last 10 years I've been using it… But for us, this rebranding, from GroupM to WPP Media, it's not just a name change alone,” he said in an exclusive interview with Storyboard18's Editor, Delshad Irani.

Kumar outlined four priorities that underpin the company’s new identity: collaboration, data and technology (with artificial intelligence at the core), innovation, and people. “It also comes from the context that we are playing a very central role of how we integrate all the WPP leverage to all our customers. And it also gives the opportunity for our people to progress in a consistent manner,” he added.

India has become a central part of that story. WPP Media is already one of WPP’s five biggest markets worldwide, according to Kumar. “So our aspiration is to keep progressing from 5 to 4 to 3, and it will be a wonderful outcome. But that's not the main focus. The main focus is about incremental growth year on year in a responsible manner.”

Read more: 'Training for transformation': Prasanth Kumar on WPP Media's people and tech-led playbook for clients and growth

Part of that growth is expected to come from the shifting contours of commerce. “If I have to look at the commerce models we had in India, in the last five years, we moved from general trade to modern trade, and we moved to E-commerce. And now you see the next phase of Q-commerce, and we are seeing the next phase of D2C brands… In the next five years, even more of the general trade market will move into these new forms of commerce,” Kumar said.

Those shifts have broader implications. “The biggest shift which is happening in India, unlike other markets, is that we are balancing both the traditional and the digital media, which is very, very important. At the same time, we are also balancing content as a key element, because it is not just entertainment. It is about commerce, it is about social, it is about influencer marketing, and it is about many other forms of engagement,” he said.

Kumar also emphasized the focus on India’s market dynamics. “We should be fortunate that we are sitting in India at this point of time, because the inspiration comes from here. The opportunity comes from here,” he said.

But he is also clear-eyed about local and global challenges. He pointed to geopolitical uncertainty, inflation and regulatory changes as variables outside the company’s control. “Every quarter it changes. Because if you see the fundamentals today, the fundamentals are being questioned in every part of the world… So, it is a mixed bag,” he said.

WPP Media’s leadership in India, Kumar insisted, has stabilized after restructuring and leadership changes. “We are fortunate to have a strong team, we are fortunate to have very strong clients, we are fortunate to have very strong partners. So we all need to work together,” he said.

For Kumar, the balance is about embracing transformation while focusing on resilience. “We all know every five years, every seven years, the world keeps changing. But the next phase of growth, what it requires, is about how do you balance between growth and responsibility,” he said.

Read more: “Focus on what you can control”: Inside the leadership mindset of WPP Media’s Prasanth Kumar