40 Under 40 2020: Arindam Bhattacharyya, Dentsu Indonesia

Arindam Bhattacharyya

Chief strategy officer, media and performance
Dentsu
Indonesia

Arindam Bhattacharya stepped aboard the Dentsu ship in late 2019 amidst tumultuous waves of change. The entire company, including process and management, was undergoing major restructuring. But Bhattacharya was not called the “king of turnaround” by his colleagues for nothing. Amidst the upheavals, he stitched together multiple capabilities in Dentsu Indonesia and fronted all internal verticals, from creative and media to customer relationship management. He addressed inefficiencies within the internal structure to plug the leakage of businesses to boutique agencies, while giving Dentsu Indonesia’s media and performance lines a facelift.

The “king” had lived up to his nickname. Within the past year, Bhattacharya has created a record win-rate among Dentsu’s businesses in the region, bagging nine wins in 11 months. The total media billing of new wins totaled to more than US$50 million. Besides helping Dentsu Indonesia set up the first regional media hub for Philip Morris International, Bhattacharya also won over Lazada Indonesia to extend its contract with Dentsu-Vizeum by another year without participating in a regional pitch.

“In light of continuous challenges and competitive threat, the strategy and execution provided by [Bhattacharya] and his team in Dentsu have helped increased organic daily active users and top-of-mind recall by double digits in a period of four months,” says Monika Rudijono, chief marketing officer of Lazada Indonesia.

Described as a calm and precise communicator, Bhattacharya’s experience in leading businesses across India, China and Southeast Asia in the past 15 years had led to a low team attrition rate of 15%, when the market benchmark is more like 40%. Seeing a talent decay across media agencies and more clients taking communications in-house, Bhattacharya is on a mission to sharpen Dentsu’s offering by upskilling the team and agency product competence.

Since the Covid-19 outbreak in Indonesia, Bhattacharya has introduced a DAN+ Google online masterclass that is attended by about 200 Dentsu employees. The live-streamed sessions equip planners with skills to fast-track delivery for clients and help traditional businesses transition to e-commerce platforms.

Sitting on a moderating committee with Nielsen Indonesia and the country’s digital marketing associations, Bhattacharya is also pushing to recalibrate digital measurement ecosystems in Indonesia.