More departures at Komli Media; Gulshan Verma heads to Outbrain

The Singapore-based Verma took over Komli Media’s Southeast Asia operations in April last year following Matthew Ward’s resignation. Both Ward and Mehta quit citing personal reasons. More recently, Pritesh Patel, managing director for India and the Middle East, left the firm to join Facebook India as its head of FMCG. Damien Lavin is now in charge of the company’s Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand businesses.

Verma joins Outbrain to lead growth in India. The content discovery firm officially launched its regional headquarters in Singapore in August last year with Anthony Hearne at the helm as regional director, SEA and India. Hearne did not respond to Campaign Asia-Pacific’s request for a comment in time for publication.

The New York-based startup is a content-recommendation platform that takes web readers to other stories within the site or to sites that are relevant to an article they’re reading. The business is built on paid distribution with big publishers such as CNN, Fox News, Hearst, Rolling Stone, US Weekly and Fast Company using its technology.

In Asia, Outbrain’s platform already has several publisher clients including ABS-CBN, CNN Travel, Channel News Asia and The Times of India. (Campaign Asia-Pacific is currently using Outbrain to recommend in-site content on article pages such as this one.)

Ex-Yahoo India director Verma joined Komli Media in 2011. His exit comes soon after the company announced a change in strategy as it launched its remarketing demand-side platform. It also made a few management changes, hiring Lavin and Ashwin Puri as head of the DSP business unit.