Basant Rathore, who had worked as media director with Madison Media, Delhi, is joining Dainik Jagran, as general manager, brand development. Rathore joins on September 18 and would report to Shailesh Gupta, director, Dainik Jagran.

Commenting on Rathore###SQ###s appointment, Gupta, said, ###DQ###Basant has been praised by the industry because of his remarkable abilities. The respect he commands in the fraternity is commendable. We are sure that his presence in our team will certainly help Jagran grow better and stronger. His vision and experience will be an asset for us.###DQ###

Talking about the challenges ahead as general manager, Rathore said, ###DQ###Jagran is perceived as a very ###SQ###press###SQ### brand. The fact that Jagran is into other media as well is not widely known. Also, there is the obvious association of Jagran being a Uttar Pradesh paper. For me, the major challenge is to build a singular media brand across multimedia platforms. Our brand will be what our customers think of us. Towards this, we need to build ourselves as an entity where every action is enabled by the power of knowledge.###DQ###

A commerce graduate from Delhi###SQ###s Shri Ram College, Rathore was among the first batch to have passed out of MICA, with a specialisation in media. Rathore started his career with O&M Chennai and later at O&M Mumbai as assistant media buyer and planner and handled accounts such as Pond###SQ###s, TI cycles and Cadbury###SQ###s. He then moved on to Mudra Media, Ahmedabad, where he worked on accounts such as Rasna, Dhara, Reliance, Wagh Bakri, Symphony, McDonald###SQ###s, Samsung and Dabur. At Madison, he was responsible for Hyundai account.