MUMBAI: Dentsu India Group has appointed Suresh Mohankumar as national planning head at Dentsu Communications.

Mohankumar will lead strategic planning and brand management at Dentsu Communications across its offices in New Delhi and Bangalore and will be based out of Bangalore. With nearly two decades of experience, he joins Dentsu from Mudra India where he was senior vice president and head of planning - Mudra South.

Dentsu India executive chairman Rohit Ohri said, “Suresh has the right combination of passion, talent and commitment to partner our creative and account management teams to take our creative product to the next level.”

Dentsu Communications chief operating officer Taira Kimura said, “Suresh brings on board strong experience across brand, categories and regions. I have great confidence in his abilities and expertise to add value to our service deliveries and up the ante at Dentsu Communications.”

Mohankumar said, “The communications business is at a crossroads as convention increasingly gives way to real consumer engagement. That integration and media-neutral planning is the way forward is exactly what Dentsu believes in and I believe that Dentsu is uniquely structured to deliver that. Also as part of an organisation at the cusp of an exciting transformation, I am very excited about my journey ahead and look forward to my mandate at Dentsu Communications.”

A commerce graduate, Mohankumar completed his MBA with a dual specialisation in marketing and finance from T.A. Pai Management Institute (TAPMI) in 1993. He started his career in account management with RK Swamy/BBDO in Chennai. Over the next seven years, he worked with Contract and Lowe in Bangalore. He switched to account planning in 2000 when he moved to Mudra Chennai. As a strategic planner, he then worked with Contract and JWT in Chennai.

He has in the past been associated with brands like Tanishq, BPL, Ford, Volkswagen, Carbon, MRF, Lotte, TI cycles, Henkel, Fa, Reynolds, McDowell’s, Johnson & Johnson and Lipton.