MUMBAI: Pantaloon Retail India Limited has decided to align the media AOR of its value and lifestyles retailing stores to Carat Media Services India Private Limited.

The company operates in the value retail domain through Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar, Gold Bazaar and Footwear Bazaar. Under lifestyle retail, the brands are Pantaloons and Central. The incumbent agency was Insight.

 
 
Pantaloon Retail head marketing Sanjeev Agrawal says, "We are taking the ROI aspect of media to the next level. For this we wanted to partner with an agency that has sound understanding of the processes and has used the same to further other clients businesses. It was in this aspect that Carat did lot of good work. Carat also has a strong understanding and use of research and other statistical proprietary tools."
 
 
Agrawal further adds, "We required partnering with an agency that is very strong and would bring on board fresh strategic and tactical skills."
 
 
Carat CEO West and South Shripad Kulkarni says, "Retail is a very big opportunity and an even bigger challenge for Media. We look forward to this challenge, armed with Carat global learnings and working as a part of Sanjeev’s team."

Carat Group CEO Charles Jenarius adds, 'In Singapore and Australia, Carat has worked out effective solutions for retail, including sophisticated response modeling. It was this learning which we adapted to the Indian market that helped us winning the clients confidence."

The key accounts of Carat include Philips, Adidas, General Mills, Dabur, Max New York Life, Ozone Pharma, Universal dairy UDV, Mattel Toys, Sahara, and AAG, the Guild comprising 32 Delhi Headquartered Agencies now.

Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd is also looking at selling a 4.53 per cent stake to Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd, to raise funds for its expansion.