WPP eyes 10 pc revenue rise in India, bets on organic growth

Maintaining an aggressive stance on its growth prospects in India, WPP, the world's largest advertising and marketing communications group foresees 10 percent revenue growth in January-December in India.

Mumbai: WPP, the world's largest advertising and marketing communications group, is expecting a revenue growth of 10 per cent in India this year.
"Our business here (India) is just under USD 600 million of revenues. So, we are very aggressive in terms of growth. We will grow in India this year by 10 per cent in terms of revenue.

It's a strong picture and our business is doing pretty well across the board," WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell said recently.
The company, with a global revenue of USD 19 billion, follows January-December financial year.

The WPP group operates a host of businesses in India, including agencies like O&M, JWT, GroupM, the Kantar Group and Grey Worldwide.
Sorrell felt that India has more room to grow as its revenue stood at just USD 600 million compared with WPP's China share of USD 1.6 billion.

"Our number is USD 1.6 billion in China, the third-largest market. In India, we have a 45 percent market share with under USD 600 million revenue, which ranks nine on WPP's country list.

"India is under-branded as a proportion of GDP it's too low. It's going to get higher," he said.
WPP's brand communication agency Cohn and Wolfe recently acquired a majority stake in public relations firm Six Degrees PR.

In India, however, Sorrell said, the group will rely more on the organic route to drive growth.
TAM India, the JV between Nielsen and WPP's Kantar, recently formed an alliance with television rating agency Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India for a separate meter management company, which Sorrell termed as "a good idea".

"The problem is when you have two systems, it usually doesn't work for either of the systems. Both companies (TAM and BARC India) thought it would be a good idea to put together one system," he added.

He felt that although digital advertising globally is on the rise, there has been a slight shift towards traditional media recently.
"I think the pendulum is sort of swinging back a bit to traditional media," he said.