According to its first quarter trading update, WPP grew 6.6% in India thanks to the group's acquisition of new businesses.

The conglomerate said revenue fell -1.4% to £3.4bn in the first quarter of 2024 and LFL sales rose to 2.1%.

“The rest of the world fell 0.6%, mainly due to a 3.2% decline in the Asia-Pacific region. “Growth in India of 6.6%, reflecting strong new business momentum last year, was offset by a decline of 15.4% in China due to a difficult macroeconomic client environment,” WPP said in a press release.

Global Integrated Agencies revenue, net of pass-through costs, fell 0.7%, with GroupM's 2.4% growth offset by a 3.3% decline at Integrated Creative Agencies due to the loss of business from a healthcare client and lower spending at technology companies was offset.

The conglomerate booked new customer orders in the quarter from AstraZeneca, Canon, Molson Coors, Daiichi Sankyo, Nestlé, Perfetti, Perrigo, Rightmove and Telefónica. In the first quarter, WPP recorded net new billings of $0.8 billion (Q1 2023: $1.5 billion).

“Strong progress on the strategic initiatives outlined at our CMD in January. Burson, GroupM and VML are on track to deliver targeted savings over the year and are well positioned to benefit from a strong pipeline,” WPP said in the statement.

The conglomerate also confirmed its “continued strategic progress” in AI initiatives. WPP Open was attended by 50,000 people. A collaboration with Google was recently announced to integrate Gemini 1.5 Pro into WPP Open.

Mark Read, WPP's chief executive officer, said: “The first quarter of 2024 was fully in line with our expectations, with the performance reflecting the toughest comparison of the year.”

“Strategically, we have made good progress in implementing the priorities set at our Capital Markets Day at the end of January. We have launched several AI tools through our WPP Open intelligent marketing operating system, including the latest base models from Bria, Google and OpenAI, and at Google Cloud Next we have launched our Performance Brain to predict the best-performing content before campaigns start live. These products are used extensively, along with investments in training our employees. WPP Open has also been at the heart of our recent new business successes, including major media wins with Nestlé.

“Structurally, VML is now well established and on the way to achieving savings. GroupM is making good progress with the simplification and Burson will be operational in July. I am very pleased with the progress we are making and we are already seeing the benefits of a simpler and more agile structure for our customers.

“Our outlook for the full year is confirmed. We remain on track to return to growth over the remainder of the year, supported by an encouraging new business pipeline and the strength of our creative and media businesses, both powered by new AI capabilities, while our simpler structure increases organizational flexibility and strength becomes cash conversion.”

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