Varun Channa leaves as Cindy Chia steps up at Mindshare Malaysia.

(marketingmagazine.com.my) – Mindshare Malaysia has announced a change in its leadership team.

The current Managing Director, Varun Channa has announced his decision to leave the agency and is currently serving out his notice period.

Taking over is Cindy Chia, who was recently promoted to General Manager in December 2015. Cindy will take over as Managing Director of Mindshare Malaysia with immediate effect.

Having been with the agency since 1999, she has worked on many of their key global accounts such as Nestle, HSBC, GSK and Chanel over the years. She was named Media Planner of the Year for South East Asia at the prestigious Campaign Asia Agency of the Year awards in 2010.

Simultaneously, Dheeraj Raina, who joined Mindshare as Head of Strategy in 2014 and who has been instrumental in several of their subsequent new business wins, including Pizza Hut, Digi, Nippon Paints and Malaysia Airlines, is being promoted to General Manager.

Raina will now take on responsibilities related to product and new business development, in addition to his strategic planning role.

Commenting on the management changes, GroupM Malaysia CEO Girish Menon said,
“Varun has put together a world class management team at Mindshare. We have a blend of home-grown talent like Cindy, talent imported from our network like Dheeraj, senior leadership from the marketing world like Michelle Nunis who runs our Nestle business and digital performance specialists like Scott Minteer who joined us from Agoda.”

“Varun set up the Loop Room in early 2015 to enable real-time data-driven marketing for clients. He has also had a 100% success rate with new business, leading to an all-time high market share of 26.1% for Mindshare. This is the perfect springboard for Cindy to take the agency to even greater heights.”

Sharing her thoughts on the new role Cindy shared,
“I am honoured to be leading Malaysia’s largest agency. This is my home and I have seen Mindshare go from strength to strength over the years, under a series of strong leaders. I would like to thank Varun for mentoring me over the past 18 months in preparation for this responsibility. I wholeheartedly commit myself to taking the agency to even greater heights, supported by the amazing talent and products we have.”

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