Sandeep Goyal, Chairman, Dentsu India: Ready to roll heads

During the 1980s, folklore in Thompson (Hindustan Thompson Associates later and now J. Walter Thompson) had it that to make it big in the organisation a person had to have handled the Horlicks account. By pure happenstance, most Thompson biggies, late former chairman Sumantra Ghoshal, current chairman Mike Khanna, former Contract head Ram Sehgal, even senior execs-turned-start-up men Nikhil Nehru and Sunil Gupta cut their advertising teeth on the prestigious SmithKlineBeecham brand.

No one can possibly tell whether Sandeep Goyal, who worked on Horlicks at Thompson, New Delhi, and left the agency when he was an account supervisor in 1989, would have made it big there or not. But he has certainly made a big-bang impact in the Rs 9,000-crore Indian advertising industry by partnering the 1,693-billion yen (Rs 68,133.9 crore) Dentsu in its India foray. And with a 26 per cent stake at that!

Reinventing himself after he resigned as Zee Television's Group Broadcasting Chief Executive in August 2002, Goyal had the option of relocating to Singapore as the head of the Asia-Pacific region for a large agency network. "The question before me was a million dollar-plus (Singapore) package right-away versus toiling to set up a new agency in India," says Sandeep Goyal, Chairman of Board, Dentsu Communications (DC) and Dentsu Marcom (DM) (See Finally Here: Dentsu In India).

What convinced Goyal, perhaps, was the lure of becoming an entrepreneur, with the power of world's biggest single agency brand, Dentsu, with 2003 revenue at $1.86 billion (Rs 8,267.7 crore, and much ahead of numbers two and three, BBDO Worldwide, $1.24 billion, and McCann Erickson Worldwide, $1.22 billion) behind him. It was a safe gamble, for Dentsu has quickly apportioned some of its biggest internationally-aligned businesses between its two agencies and clocked around Rs 100 crore billings in India. In the last decade or so, this is the first instance of such a big agency coming to life almost overnight, and that too with an Indian entrepreneur at the helm.

The question waiting to be asked is, what took Dentsu so long? The agency has been present in India for over a decade now, through a minority 20 per cent stake in Rediffusion Dentsu Young & Rubicam. "India is big market, and we got to know it through Rediffusion DY&R. It also took time to find a good person, an Indian partner, here," explains Fumio Oshima, Executive VP, Dentsu Inc.

The India Factor

In the last decade, Dentsu's Asian strategy has focussed on consolidating its China business, which has grown to $328 million (Rs 1,458 crore) and 1,000 employees. That meant India stayed off the radar of the agency even as some of its biggest Japanese clients, Honda Motors, Toyota Motors, Sony and Panasonic, were making do with agencies obliquely linked to Dentsu, quite by default.

"We started looking at setting up a majority agency here 11-months ago," adds Oshima, a member of Dentsu Inc's board and third in the Dentsu's pecking order after the Chairman and the President. Well, there was a time in late 2002, say industry watchers, when Dentsu looked at acquiring stakes in a plethora of agencies that handled its Japanese clients in India: Orchard Advertising (Toyota), Dhar & Hoon (Honda cars) and Triton (Honda scooters). "When we got speaking, it (Dentsu) was already very clear on getting into India as a greenfield venture," adds Goyal.

And how does Dentsu intend living with Rediffusion DY&R? "I hope this (the spat amongst majority shareholders in the agency, Arun Nanda and associates on one side, and WPP on the other) is resolved soon," adds Oshima. The taciturn Japanese will not say much more, and even the usually loquacious Goyal prefers to stay mum on the subject. The DY&R partnership is weakening with the network being re-branded only Y&R in some markets.

It is interesting to note the need for setting up two separate Dentsu agencies in India, both reporting to Goyal as Chairman of Board, but not interacting with each other. In Japan, Dentsu operates like a monolith from its Shiodone Annex headquarters in Tokyo. It handles fiercely competing businesses, such as Honda and Toyota, Panasonic and Sony under the same company, but through different cells that boast virtually impregnable firewalls.

"Once, I invited two senior Dentsu executives, visiting Rediffusion dy&r separately, to dinner at my home in Mumbai. When they arrived, it was surprising for me to find that they had never met, seen or spoken to each other in their 25- year careers at Dentsu. It turned out that the two used to handle competing clients," recounts Goyal, who spent seven years with Rediffusion, the last as President before leaving for Zee Television in 2001. Now obviously, such discipline can only be maintained in Japan (and perhaps only by the Japanese) hence the need for a two-, and who knows, a multiple-agency structure in the future, as Dentsu starts fishing for competing Indian clients. At both DC and DM, a senior Japanese pro looks after key Japanese clients.

Already Dentsu has tasted blood in multiple agency pitches and won the Sony Ericsson, Net Cradle, and Blaupunkt accounts. The ad industry is also abuzz with Dentsu partnering the Nira Radia-promoted Vaishnavi Communications (which handles public relations for the Tata group) to handle some business from the group. "Yes, we are going to the (Tata) pitch together, but there is no joint venture with Vaishnavi on the horizon," explains Goyal.

With Rs 100-crore, Dentsu is not anywhere close to challenging the current agency pecking order in the country. But the reason why many agencies may have started to get the jitters is the formidable client base of Dentsu Inc, waiting to be tapped in India: Suzuki, Hitachi, Panasonic, Sony, Yamaha, Casio, Canon, Fuji, Toshiba, Sansui, Akai, and Kawasaki to name just a few. "We hope to close this financial year with around Rs 200 crore," says Goyal. Caution, safe play and understatement, typical Japanese corporate virtues, are clearly showing on the man known for anything but these in his 20 long years in advertising.