Preet Bedi to join Percept as CEO

MUMBAI: Top-level movements are no more uncommon in the advertising sector. Close on the heels of McCann Erickson’s Santosh Desai moving to Kishore Biyani’s Future Group, former Rediffusion DY&R president Preet Bedi is expected to join Percept Picture Company as chief executive. The move may signal the exit of current Percept COO Mahesh Ramanathan.

Mr Bedi, who has spent about 19 years in advertising, confirmed his appointment. “Advertising is now suffering from the after effects of a party that is over. The sector has reached a level of maturity for anything radical to happen in the next few years. Also, after close to two decades, one has been there and done that,” he told ET.

Mr Bedi’s mandate will be to ensure “quality” of the movies being produced by Precept and to ramp up the scale of operations, taking it beyond the Indian boundaries. “The corporatisation of Bollywood has just begun, and the next few years would see a lot of evolution in this sector... I’m very excited to be a part of this growth,” said Mr Bedi, who will report to joint managing director Shailendra Singh.

Percept Picture has been involved with films such as Page 3, animation movie Hanuman, Malamaal Weekly, Corporate and Dor. The company recently announced that it has 22 films in various stages of production.