DAN hires new Indochina head from Y&R

Dentsu Aegis Network has hired Sanjay Bhasin to take on the newly created role of Indochina head, effective January 2018.

Bhasin joins from Y&R, where he spent 24 years starting in New York in 1993. Since then, Bhasin has worked across the US and Asia-Pacific, taking on senior roles at Y&R including CEO of Thailand, Indochina and most recently Southeast Asia.

For Dentsu Aegis Network, the Indochina head will look after the agency’s units in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. Dick van Motman, CEO of DAN Southeast Asia, said the decision to create the new role came from the significant growth the agency has seen in these four rapidly developing markets.

“We have seen a lot of growth in Vietnam, and we have established ourselves organically in Myanmar, growing to a team of 30-plus people, which has also given us confidence,” van Motman told Campaign Asia-Pacific. “It would be remiss of us if we didn’t try to create synergies and use our resources [in the four markets] in the best way.”

Van Motman said DAN had been receiving more and more requests from clients looking to “expand into the new frontier” of Indochina, which also informed the agency’s decision to create the role.

Bhasin will be based in Vietnam and will replace Toshinori Aoki, current Vietnam CEO. Aoki will return to a new role at Dentsu Inc in Japan. “We have a great management team in Vietnam already, built by Aoki-san,” said van Motman. “It still needs to grow, but we have some bandwidth now to grow across the Indochina region.”

Bhasin said DAN’s “collaborative spirit, strength and suite of capabilities” led him to join the agency.

Van Motman said on top of Bhasin’s experience, he “is a product of industry convergence, and he understands diversity in the business”, building teams with a range of skills across APAC during his career.

“In this day and age brands are being built differently,” van Motman added. “We are hiring diverse talent, either internally or through acquisition, and we need people to bring that all together. Sanjay is a people person who is also very client-centric, which is crucial for us as a solution-based organisation.”