Mumbai: Dentsu, the global advertising, marketing, and technology leader headquartered in Tokyo, has strengthened its South Asia leadership by elevating Harini Muralidharan as the Chief People Officer (CPO) for South Asia. The move marks a significant leadership transition within the network and underscores Dentsu’s continued commitment to building a future-ready, people-first organisation in one of its fastest-growing regions.
Muralidharan, who has been with Dentsu for over three years, steps into the CPO role after holding multiple senior HR leadership positions across the organisation. Her progression reflects the company’s investment in leadership excellence and its strategic focus on talent transformation across markets.
Before being named CPO, Harini most recently served as Cluster HR Director – India, Financial Services & India Business Platforms, overseeing operations across India and Sri Lanka. In this mandate, she was responsible for driving commercial growth, stewarding global finance services, and leading cross-functional initiatives to ensure alignment, efficiency, and strategic impact across various business units.
In her earlier role at Dentsu, Harini shaped HR strategy for Global Financial Services and Transformation teams, playing a pivotal role in strengthening leadership pipelines, enabling organisational effectiveness, and supporting transformation programmes that enhanced workforce performance and engagement.
With more than two decades of strategic HR experience, Harini brings deep expertise in people operations, business partnering, culture transformation, and workforce strategy—skills honed through leadership roles at Tesco, Juniper Networks, Ericsson, NetApp, Infosys, and earlier-career stints at EY, Hewlett Packard, and two tech startups. Notably, during her tenure at Tesco, she led the People Business Partnering function and contributed significantly to the company’s rise in the Great Place to Work rankings.
In her new CPO role, Harini is expected to further accelerate Dentsu’s people strategy for South Asia, enhance organisational agility, deepen synergies between business platforms and finance services, and champion a culture of inclusion and innovation across the region.
With around 68,000 employees operating in nearly 120 countries, Dentsu’s latest leadership elevation reinforces its ambition to drive sustainable growth powered by strong people capabilities and transformative leadership.
