Dentsu Aegis Network Acquires SVG Media From Smile Group, Launches Columbus In India

Japanese advertising and public relations company, Dentsu Aegis Network has acquired Smile Group owned SVG Media Pvt. Ltd.

With this move SVG Media will join Dentsu’s Asia Pacific digital marketing agency Columbus to become SVG Columbus. The acquisition will also support Columbus’ expansion in Asia Pacific.

On behalf of SVG Columbus management, Anurag Gupta, CEO of SVG Columbus said: “We started out as a digital media group more than a decade ago, and for us to join forces with a clear market leader in digital, Dentsu Aegis Network, makes perfect sense. Their priority in placing digital at the forefront of their strategy and goals align perfectly with ours. We will continue to scale our offering in performance marketing and serving clients through the network and other agency networks.”

Founded in 2006, SVG Media includes over 280 specialists across four major Indian cities Gurugram, Mumbai, Chennai, and Bengaluru. As per a company statement, SVG Media includes flagship brands DGM, Komli and Seventynine and has over 150 Mn Unique Visitors in India.

It offers diverse digital media competencies including online performance marketing, mobile app distribution, representations, social and web services through its flagship brands. The group has one of the largest client bases in the Indian digital media sector with over 700 monthly active advertiser campaigns locally, as well as international clients in Dubai, Indonesia, and China.

With this move, Chirag Shah, CEO of SVG Mobile & SeventyNine; Deven Dharamdasani, COO of SVG Mobile & SeventyNine; Akshay Mathur, Business Head of Komli; and Ashwani Mehta, Finance Controller at SVG, will also join the SVG Managing Board. The SVG Columbus Managing Board will be chaired by Vivek Bhargava, CEO of Performance, Dentsu Aegis Network India.

Smile Group is one of the leading internet group in the country and has executed successful partnerships with AirBnB, Scan Group Africa, Yahoo, WPP Digital, Ogilvy-neo, etc. Its interests lie across digital media, ecommerce, services and Internet investments.

Harish Bahl and Manish Vij, founder and co-founder of the Smile Group, will no longer act as directors of SVG Media and will continue to focus on investments through the Smile Group. It has also been agreed that the Smile Group will retain the Tyroo Techlabs business.

As per Ashish Bhasin, Chairman and CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network South Asia the merged entity will now allow the Dentsu group to have over 1,300 digital professionals, accounting for over 35% of its revenues.