By SONALI KRISHNA
Indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Seven months after UTV made some strategic appointments Abhijeet Pradhan vice president UTV and Venugopal Changrashekar channel director (Sony, Zee, Zoom and Sahara One) have decided to move on.

Both Pradhan and Chandrashekar put in their papers last week.

Interestingly, these appointments were done with the thought of incorporating client servicing processes within the production house. Pradhan and Chandrashekar, both former Contract Advertising employees have enjoyed substantial number of years in the advertising world.

Pradhan will be joining The Times of India's response section and will be reporting directly to TOI director Bhaskar Das.

Chadrashekhar is currently grappling with two offers, and will make his decision next week.

Speaking to Indiantelevision.com, Pradhan and Chandrashar said, "We had come with a vision of setting up a channel driven team which is similar to the account management process in the advertising agencies. But we think we are better suited in the broadcasting or media arena."

UTV, after the recent shift of Zareena Mehta to Hungama as programming head, has appointed two creative directors Ronita Mitra from Smile TV and Arif Ali, who is essentially a script writer.

Pradhan who was with Contract for six years, was a brand custodian as well as a founding team member of Core Consulting, which is a marketing/ customer consulting outfit started by Contract Advertising (a member of the WPP group). Cadburys, Godrej and Portico were some strategic accounts that he handled at the agency.

Chandrashekar has had extensive experience in servicing in the last 12 years. In Contract, Chandrashekar worked on international and national accounts like Asian paints, Bajaj Auto, Philips lighting, Heinz, Shoppers stop, ICICI BANK, BPCL and Allianze Bajaj, to name a few.