Ashish Bhasin elevated as Dentsu's APAC CEO with immediate effect

Current Affairs

Ad and media agency group Dentsu Aegis Network (Dentsu) on Thursday said it was elevating its India Chairman Ashish Bhasin to the position of Asia-Pacific (APAC) chief executive officer (CEO) with immediate effect.
The promotion comes within seven months of Bhasin being appointed as CEO of the Greater South Asian region at the agency. Bhasin is the first Indian within the Dentsu network to be elevated to the position of APAC CEO. He will also join Dentsu’s global executive team, the first Indian ever to be part of this group, reporting to Takaki Hibino, executive chairman of Dentsu’s APAC region.
According to industry sources, Bhasin will also retain his India chairman role. Anand Bhadkamkar, formerly chief operating officer and CFO of Dentsu’s Greater South Asian region, will take over as India CEO of the agency.Bhasin said, “The advertising landscape has become complex. Clients are asking for long-term vision and simplicity. My attention will be on providing this, as I undertake a new journey within the network.”
Bhasin’s elevation is the second high-profile announcement within the Indian advertising world this year after Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and creative director, Ogilvy (South Asia), took over as the latter’s worldwide chief creative officer in January. These promotions, said experts, highlight the importance that global ad agency managements are giving to India and the talent coming from the country.
Bhasin, who has been with Dentsu for 11 years, has been instrumental in driving the group’s interest into multiple areas, including digital marketing, advertising, data analytics, public relations, and creative communication.

 Over the past few years, Bhasin has wrapped up a series of acquisitions for Dentsu in India, notably, in the digital and social media advertising and marketing space...Read More

Azhar's listing shows int'l commitment to root terrorism out of Pak: US

International News

The UN declaring Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar a global terrorist demonstrates international commitment to rooting out terrorism in Pakistan and bringing security and stability to South Asia, the Trump administration said Wednesday, expressing hope that Islamabad will take sustained and irreversible action against terror groups operating from its soil.

Welcoming China's decision to lift its hold on the proposal to blacklist the Pakistan-based JeM chief, a senior Trump administration official during a conference call with reporters said after 10 years China has done the right thing by lifting its blockade.

"I think China seems to have understood that it was increasingly important that it's actions on the international stage on terrorism matched it's rhetoric, the White House official said on the condition of anonymity.

Pulwama attack, the official noted was just the latest in the terrorist attacks that this deadly group has conducted.

"Designating Azhar demonstrates international commitment to rooting out terrorism in Pakistan and bringing security and stability to South Asia," the official said, adding that this designation is critically important and it was a long time coming.

This designation, the official said, is in line with Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's stated commitment to crackdown on militancy inside Pakistan and his acknowledgment that prosperity and development in Pakistan is contingent on maintaining regional stability.

 So we acknowledged that this designation is a good step forward and we look forward to how Pakistan would use this international designation press forward on its own stated commitment, the official said...Read More

Can Bangladesh beat India in development race? Here's what economists say

Economy & Policy:

There’s an old theory that as an organism develops, it progresses through the same evolutionary stages travelled by its ancestors. Traditionally, economic development has worked in a similar way. When a country first shifts from agrarian poverty to industrialization, it tends to start out in light manufacturing, especially textiles. Later it masters more complex manufactured products, and finally, it progresses to inventing its own cutting-edge technology. Thus, each country’s development tends to look a bit that of nations that already went through the process.

That certainly seems to describe the experience of South Korea and Taiwan, which reached developed-country status relatively recently. It’s also the path being followed by China. As these countries got richer and their wages rose, low-tech labour-intensive manufacturing industries tended to migrate to countries with cheaper workers.

Recently, one of the biggest beneficiaries of this process has been Bangladesh. The garment industry accounts for more than 80 per cent of the South Asian nation’s export revenue, and about a fifth of its gross domestic product. In 2017, Bangladesh was the world’s second-largest apparel supplier after China, with 6.5 per cent of the market, outpacing neighbouring India despite the latter’s much larger economy.

This economic development path has no doubt come at a real human and social cost -- Bangladesh's workers suffer harsh working conditions and many industrial accidents, including a horrific factory collapse in 2013 that killed more than a thousand people. But overall, the tried-and-true industrialization strategy seems to be working. Real GDP per capita has doubled since the turn of the century, and Bangladesh appears to be on a similar exponential growth path as its neighbour India:


 India, meanwhile, has generally underperformed in manufacturing. The country does have a few bright spots -- for example, it’s now the world’s sixth-biggest auto manufacturer, with an immense factory cluster in Gujarat,and has been increasing its production of smartphones...Read More

Uber to block riders who misbehave or damage properties despite warnings

Companies News:

Uber will now remove riders who despite repeated warnings misbehave or damage the driver or co-passenger's property, as per the updated community guidelines of the ride-hailing giant.

The US-based company has also added a 'Driver Safety Toolkit' - designed on the lines of a similar offering for riders - to offer a suite of in-app safety features for its driver-partners in India.
"Courtesy matters. Riders are expected to exercise good judgment and behave decently towards other people in the car when riding with Uber... Riders may lose access to Uber if they don't meet the star ratings requirements set out in the community guidelines," Uber Head of Cities (India and South Asia) Prabhjeet Singh told PTI.

Singh explained that the company will now start removing from its platform those riders who despite repeated warnings flout Uber's community guidelines. These riders will be given enough notifications before they are removed from the platform, and the number of such riders would be "handful", he said.


 "We have updated Uber's community guidelines which extend the same behavioral standards to the riders that Uber has for the driver partners. Even though a vast majority of riders will not be affected by this update, it reminds a select few what behaviour is expected of them while using the app," Singh added...Read More