The appointments ease question marks over the future of JWT-owned Contract, following the departure of long-standing creative director Parveez Shaikh and a number of other members of the creative team.
Agency president Colvyn Harris had spoken earlier of having people specialise in particular sectors and the recent appointments are supposed to be in line with that thinking.
Harris claims these are yet early days, with Desai already working on the recently-acquired South Africa Tourism account, while Kaushik is focusing on a pitch at the moment. However, the agency is "not actively looking for a national creative director", according to Harris.
Syeda Imam, who had national creative responsibility at Contract left the agency last year to head creative at JWT India. Harris says, "In every city we are looking at an office-wise focus on the types of accounts, clients and business and have comprehensively staffed creatives."