Essence hires senior APAC leaders

Essence today announced the hiring of Kingshuk Mitra as Asia-Pacific chief operating officer, and Monica Bhatia at vice president, client partner.

Mitra was previously managing director of Maxus Philippines, the former GroupM agency that merged into Wavemaker along with MEC. In his newly-created APAC COO role, Mitra will help set Essence’s regional strategic priorities, and lead the day-to-day operations of the Singapore regional headquarters.

Mitra said the role creates “the backbone of the operational structure” of the agency.

As VP, Bhatia will lead Essence’s Google business in APAC, across six regional markets. She was previously Maxus head of digital, and has experience working for clients including L’Oreal, Jetstar, and Unicharm.

Bhatia said she is keen to apply Essence’s data-led solutions to clients’ marketing objectives.

Kyoko Matsushita, Essence APAC CEO, said: “Monica and Kingshuk are seasoned marketing leaders with extensive client and operations expertise, deep knowledge of the region as well as strong integrated media experience.”