Publicis Groupe’s Anupriya Acharya on India business, IPL, and more

On the sidelines of Goafest 2023, Anupriya Acharya, CEO, Publicis Groupe, South Asia spoke to Storyboard18 about the advertising growth highlighting that India continues to be a bright spot amidst the global economic gloom.

“However, it's not like that India will never ever at all get impacted by the global headwinds. So, definitely we are maintaining some caution here as well. But if we were to look at how things are moving on the ground in the media market, so far, everything has been fine,” she said.

In terms of well-performing categories, Acharya said that all categories related to domestic consumption is doing well. This includes F&B and consumer packaged goods (CPG) while there has seen some cooling off in the tech sector.

“..and that of course, has an impact on advertising as a market as well. So that is there but many other categories have made up for it. It would be good for everyone to maintain some caution,” she noted.

Talking about the recently concluded IPL 2023 edition, Acharya stressed that IPL has definitely become bigger as a property.

“The whole split with digital being sold separately and the availability (of the tournament) as free on digital has only increased the market. It has increased the overall market pie rather than a market share shift from one to the other. There could be a little cannibalisation, but that's a lesser challenge as compared to the opportunity that advertisers and the marketers have had on the back of the really expanded universe,” she noted.

Acharya also spoke about the growth at Publicis Groupe and the variety of clients that the advertising company handles.

“We have a strong presence on classic categories such as lCPG and the food and beverage as well as BFSI. Automobile is also a big one for us. And then of course the app economy clients also we have more than our fair share of clients there,” she said.

Acharya is looking to tap into new emerging and growing sectors such as EVs and health.