Hyderabad, August' 2004: Change is evident at Everest Integrated Communications. In recent weeks, several senior level appointments have been made by the 58-year-old agency across the country in an effort to strengthen its network and in the process create a new-age advertising powerhouse.

According to Mahesh Chauhan, President, Everest, himself a recent entrant, “My mandate at Everest is very clear – make Everest an agency to reckon with. My single point programme to fulfill that mandate was to embark on a process of creating a team at Everest, which would offer the widest possible range of expertise in order to add value to existing businesses and acquire new businesses. While the process of strengthening Team Everest will be continuous, and we are looking at several new appointments in the near future, I believe we have today the nucleus of an agency which will be able to compete and win against all opposition.”

Amongst the significant additions to Team Everest is Sourabh Mishra who joins as National Planning Director. With over 12 years of experience, Sourabh moved from O&M where he was one of the key planning resources. Having worked both on the agency and the client side, Sourabh has long been earmarked as one of Indian advertising’s brightest planning talents. Sourabh has worked on businesses like Coca Cola, Cadbury’s, HLL, ITC Foods, Himalaya, Dabur, Parle, NIIT and Titan among others.

Strengthening the Planning team further is Amit Kekre who joins as Planning Director, Mumbai. Amit has worked with leading agencies including O&M, Lowe and JWT and on leading brands such as HLL, Marico, Standard Chartered, Tata Motors and BP-Castrol.

Everest’s Mumbai office has also seen the entry of Vijay Lalwani as Associate Creative Director. Joining from O&M, Vijay’s work was amongst the finalists at Cannes this year. His recent work includes Hutch, Sprite, Cadbury and Parle among others. Anant Pal Singh has moved in as Account Director from Rediffusion DYR. Anant has extensive experience on brands like BP-Castrol and Airtel.

Team Everest’s Delhi office has been strengthened with the appointment of Rajeev Rakshit as Vice President and Head of Office. With over 13 years of experience, Rajeev joins Everest from Publicis and is regarded as an instrumental member of the team behind the emergence of Publicis. Prior to Publicis, Rajeev was a key member of the team leading Euro RSCG in Bangalore during the agency’s turnaround and heydays during the late 90s. Rajeev brings in significant expertise in the technology arena acquired over the years working on brands like Intel, HP-Compaq, Nokia, Microsoft and Motorola in both national and regional roles. Joining Rajeev at Everest Delhi is Manisha Sethi as Associate Creative Director. Manisha moves from Cheil where she was working on Samsung.

According to Chauhan, “The reality is that Everest had good people on board but the addition of certain key ingredients was essential for the complete product to be a synergistic whole. The track records of the new appointments speak for themselves and provide completeness to the Everest offering. To sum it all up, as they say, we have managed to put together ‘A Few Good Men (and Women!)’ and the next step for us is to acquire ‘A Few (or lots) Good Businesses’!