Madison World’s just acquired a controlling stake in brand consulting and PR firm Integrated Brand-comm Pvt Ltd. Lara Balsara Vajifdar, Executive Director of Madison World, tells us more about the acquisition and how it will become a strategic value-add for the agency.
What makes Brand-comm a strategic value addition for Madison? We have developed a fairly strong PR offering in Madison PR, under the leadership of Paresh Chaudhary. We now have a strong team of 80 people and work with blue chip clients like Procter & Gamble, ITC, GSK (vaccines division), Kellogg’s, Wella, J W Marriott, Abbott Healthcare, Tata Power, Café Coffee Day, Crompton and many others. Having Brand-comm as a part of Madison World further consolidates our position in the PR space. We will now be a team of 120 PR professionals, bring new clients into the Madison fold and prepare a larger platform for future growth.
Will Brand-comm operate as a separate agency or be integrated with Madison PR? What is the reporting structure for R Sridhar? Yes, the two entities will remain separate. But we hope to extract the benefit of synergies between the two companies. Sridhar will report to the Board of Brand-comm, chaired by Sam Balsara.
What will be some of the synergies of this partnership? Madison PR has a lot of expertise and experience in the Corporate and Brand PR space and Brand-comm has a lot of expertise in the South market.
Is Madison now on an acquisition agenda? At Madison, we have always been open to partnerships. Our vision is not necessarily to be the largest, but to be known for doing good quality of work and offer a differentiated product in all the 11 functional areas we operate in – Advertising, Media, PR, Out of Home, Rural, Activations, Events, Sports, Retail, Mobile and Entertainment.
