Publicis India acquires Beehive Comm; eyes more revenue

In some big news from Indian advertisement land, Publicis India scored another win by picking up ten year old mid-sized full service agency Beehive Communications. CNBC-TV18’s Anant Rangaswami and Animesh Das find out how this will help Publicis India.

It’s been quite a year for Publicis India. After acquiring digital agency Istrat and brand consultancy Marketgate last December, the agency brought on board stalwarts Ambika Srivastava, Partha Sinha and Bobby Pawar. Today, it's added to its kitty - the ten year old mid-sized full service agency, Beehive Communications. Also Read: Airtel completely acquires Qualcomm founded 4G company "We set ourselves a target about a year and a half back to say not only do we want to double our scale, width and depth. But we really want to set ourselves up to take a fair shot at being the top three. When I say the top three, we want to be in the top three by scale, we want to be in the top three by reputation, we want to be in the top three by recognition. And so, we knew we had to do discontinuous things to get there. The strategy includes building scale; the strategy includes adding width of services. And the strategy includes adding depth of talent on our bench," says Nakul Chopra, CEO, Publicis South Asia. Believed to have revenues to the tune of Rs 40 crore, Beehive Communications currently services 24 to 30 clients. Though it will continue to operate as a standalone agency for the time being, its marriage to Publicis means a name change to Publicis Beehive. Publicis says this acquisition is part of its strategy to increase revenue from non-traditional advertising to 15 percent by next year. Only time will tell if Publicis makes it to the top three of Indian advertising, but it's certainly got other agencies, and their holding companies, sitting up and taking notice.