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Saagar Sethi Named Dentsu’s Chief Business Officer for South Asia

Ad Tribe! Bureau2 min read
Saagar Sethi, Chief Business Officer for South Asia at dentsu

Dentsu has appointed Saagar Sethi Chief Business Officer for South Asia, effective 1 September 2026, with a portfolio covering investment and trading, media planning and operations, the performance practice and operational excellence.

  • New role: Chief Business Officer, South Asia, dentsu, from 1 September 2026
  • Portfolio: Investment and Trading, Media Planning and Operations, Performance Practice, Operational Excellence
  • Reports to: Sujit Vaidya, CFO, with a matrix line to Ajay Gupte, COO
  • At dentsu since 2022, leading Investment and Trading
  • Experience: over two decades across media, commercial strategy, transformation, procurement and business operations, including LG Electronics and Ernst & Young

Four Functions, One Seat

The appointment is a structural decision more than a personnel one. Investment and trading, planning and operations, performance, and operational excellence normally sit in separate reporting lines, and the seams between them are where agency groups lose time: planning commits to an outcome, trading buys the inventory, performance is measured against a target neither of them set.

Harsha Razdan was direct about that being the point:

"Brands here are being asked to show business outcomes, and the distance between a media decision and a commercial result has never been shorter. Our job is to close that distance for our clients. Saagar has spent his career at the commercial end of this business, and putting investment, planning, performance, and operational excellence in one pair of hands gives clients a more direct line to growth."

Saagar Sethi Reports To The CFO, Not The CEO

The reporting line is the most revealing detail. Sethi reports to the Chief Financial Officer, with a matrix relationship to the Chief Operating Officer. A media business putting its investment and performance portfolio under finance is saying something about how it intends the job to be judged.

It also fits the person. Sethi's background is procurement, transformation and commercial strategy, at LG Electronics and Ernst and Young before dentsu, which is a buyer's and an advisor's training rather than a planner's.

An Internal Promotion, Which Is Not Nothing

Sethi joined dentsu in 2022 and has run investment and trading since. Razdan's statement makes a point of it, saying his understanding of how the organisation works makes him the right person for the portfolio.

For a consolidation like this, that is the substantive argument rather than a courtesy. Merging four functions requires knowing which internal arrangements are load-bearing and which are habit, and that is not knowledge an outside hire arrives with.

More on Ad Tribe People.

#ajay gupte#dentsu#harsha razdan#media investment#saagar sethi#sujit vaidya
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