Bharat Thakrar, the man who built one of Kenya’s biggest marketing and advertising firms, says he joined the communications world by accident.
Mr Thakrar, 69, the marketing guru who bestrode the sector like a colossus for nearly four decades, quit yesterday as the chief executive of WPP-Scangroup where he was a founding shareholder.
The resignation of the billionaire, who has attended Harvard Business School, comes weeks after his suspension.
Mr Thakrar was suspended alongside chief finance officer Satyabrata Das on February 18 when it became clear he had lost favour with his board.
"The world is very different from the one I stumbled into when I joined communications by accident almost 40 years ago," Mr Thakrar wrote in a recent article posted on his LinkedIn page.
Thakrar’s suspension
"A temporary position in a local advertising agency kickstarted the journey into lifelong love and desire to create the best of communication campaigns for African brands," he said, adding the only skill that has been a constant his years of experience is having an open mind.
This is perhaps the time the former chairman of the Advertising Practitioners Association (APA) in Kenya will need an open mind.
His name has been dropped from the Scangroup website at a time foreign investors own 81.4 per cent of the firm.
Listed companies in Kenya rarely go to such an extent unless the claims touch on financial impropriety or other irreconcilable differences.
In a notice to financial markets, the company said further to the announcement regarding the suspension, Mr Thakrar had tendered his resignation as CEO and board member. Recruitment of new CEO "Mr Thakrar has resigned as a director of the company’s subsidiaries and affiliates. Investigation into the allegations of misconduct and possible offences against the two will continue," the statement read.The board said it would start the recruitment of a new CEO."The board has delegated authority to interim Chief Operating Officer Alec Graham," the statement added.The suspension of Mr Das indicates the allegations facing the executives could be financial in nature. The profitability of the firm has been on a free fall in the last five years, from Sh478 million in 2015 to Sh158 million in 2019. WPP-Scangroup’s best year was 2018 when it recorded a Sh612 million profit.Mr Thakrar turned down our requests for an interview. Marketing genius Until the death of Safaricom chief executive Bob Collymore, Mr Thakrar was the silent tiger whose influence was felt all over […]
