Arun was born with a silver spoon as his title Divan indicates. He was chosen from amongst thousands of candidates for the first batch of IIM Ahmedabad in 1966. He was awarded a gold medal from IIM and shared the honours with Dr C K Prahlad, the famous management guru.
He started his career with Hindustan Lever. Thats where he cut his teeth in marketing for the first six years. Thereafter he moved to delve into the exciting world of advertising and no agency was good enough for him so he started his own REDIFFUSION in 1973.
Arun is the Chairman of Rediffusion DY&R in India, but more importantly also Chairman of DY&R Wunderman, Asia Pacific and it is out of choice that he is based in India, but in charge of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Philippines, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, China, India, Australia and New Zealand for both DY&R the agency and the Wunderman network. He is also on the board of Y&R USA and on the board of DY&R agency companies in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Korea and also a WPP Director on the board of LG Ad. Incorporated in Korea.