Wavemaker, the new media, content and technology agency, has appointed Rabinder Thirumurthy, also known as Rabe Iyer, as CEO for Wavemaker MENA. The announcement was made by Ajit Varghese, Wavemaker’s Global President of Market Development.
Rabe joins from a position as Managing Director of GroupM India media agency Motivator, based in Delhi. He is relocating to Dubai to officially join Wavemaker on June 10th.
Ajit Varghese commented: “I’ve known Rabe since he joined Motivator and I’ve always been impressed by his commitment to excellence. He’s a proven leader with strong business acumen and I’m sure that he, together with our fantastic leadership team across the region, is perfectly positioned to make Wavemaker MENA a formidable future-facing agency.”
Filip Jabbour, CEO of GroupM MENA, added, “Rabe is a great plus for Wavemaker; he has the skill, the vision and the deep understanding of our industry to lead and grow our business in the region.”
Rabe Iyer said, “Wavemaker’s ambition, it’s obsession with the purchase journey and desire to connect and scale its capabilities, is exciting. I believe that MENA has a large potential for growth and I look forward to working with the talented team here to deliver on the agency’s ambition across the region.”
Rabe’s career spans 25+ years in media, advertising and communication. Before joining Motivator in 2012, Rabe was at Reliance Broadcast Network where he helped launch live, activation, outdoor and digital businesses, besides building strong integration models to unlock the value of Reliance media assets. Prior to that he worked nine years with Publicis Group Media, among others leading the expansion of the group’s agencies in Vietnam. Rabe has worked with brands like Nestle, P&G, Hyundai, Honda Cars, Yamaha, Coca Cola Company, Bristol Mayer Squibb, Visa, Sara Lee, L’Oréal, Apple, Nokia and Huawei. Under Rabe’s leadership, Motivator became the fastest growing agency and ranked among India’s Top 10 quality agencies, according to RECMA.
Founded July 2017, Wavemaker is a billion dollar-revenue media, content and technology agency, obsessed with the customer’s purchase journey. We invented WM Momentum, the world’s most comprehensive study into how people make purchase decisions and have conducted over 350,000 surveys in 35 markets and across more than 70 categories. Our 8,500 people in 90 countries are united through our focus on understanding, accelerating and optimizing purchase journeys; making them more satisfying for consumers and more effective for our clients. We are a part of GroupM, WPP’s global media investment management company.