Lakshmi Narasimhan, former Network18 CEO who had moved to a corporate role after Durga Raghunath had taken over his role in April this year, had joined big data firm Crayon Data to head its "mobile and data transformation" offering, focusing on its advertising, FMCG and media verticals. Narasimhan will also front-end Crayon Data's partnership with Mindshare, to develop the latter’s adaptive marketing offering in Asia-Pacific region. Former Vivaki Chairpersonal Srikant Sastri is an investor in Crayon Data. Narasimhan is familiar with the advertising businesS: before joining Network18, Narasimhan had been a national director of the central trading group with Group M (the media arm of WPP). He started his career with HTA (now re-christened J.Walter Thompson) as a Media Planner. He was part of the team which started up HTA Fulcrum, the AOR for Unilever in India in 1995. Post his stint with Madison as head of the Coca Cola AOR, he returned to HTA in late-2000 as head of buying on the Unilever business. Before being made CEO of Network18 Digital (Web18), Narasimhan had been the CEO of the magazine publishing business Infomedia, before which he headed business development for Network18 and also held responsibility for revenue maximisation at Web18. He was also involved in the setting up of Sports18 and Synergy 18. At Network18 Digital, no replacement for Durga Raghunath appears to have been announced. She quit in July 2014. Things have changed at Network18 since Reliance Industries took over in May. Our complete coverage of RIL Network18: - Moneycontrol CEO…
