The record
The leadership transition was announced on 29 October 2026. Roy brings three decades of experience in brand strategy, marketing transformation and business building. He previously served as President and Head of Ogilvy Delhi, worked with more than a dozen of the world’s top 100 brands, co-founded an advertising agency where he worked on the Paperboat brand, and later helped build G.O.A.T Brand Labs.
VR Rajesh, CEO of The Ogilvy Group India, said Grey 82.5 “enters this next phase on the back of tremendous momentum, built on a strong foundation following the successful integration of Grey and 82.5,” and thanked Ramamurthy for his leadership. Grey 82.5 is part of The Ogilvy Group, a portfolio of agency brands that operate independently while drawing on the group’s collective expertise.
Why this move matters
Roy’s appointment is a homecoming with an entrepreneurial detour in between — the profile agencies increasingly want at the top: someone who has run a large network office and built businesses from scratch. Grey 82.5 itself is a post-merger construct (Grey + 82.5), so its next CEO inherits an integration that is declared complete but still needs a growth story. Roy’s challenger-brand background — Paperboat is the textbook Indian challenger case — fits that brief.
What this signals — analysis
Read this together with the Ramamurthy move to VML India: WPP’s India bench is rotating, not recruiting. When a group can fill two CEO chairs from its own leadership pool, it keeps client relationships and institutional memory intact — the two things agencies actually sell.
For context, see the Leadership Moves archive for other verified leadership changes, and our companion piece on Kiran Ramamurthy’s move to VML India.