WPP in India grew by 6.6%, thanks to new business acquisitions by the group, according to its first quarter trading update.

The conglomerate announced that in Q1 of 2024, revenue declined by -1.4% to £3.4 billion and LFL revenue grew to 2.1%.

"Rest of World declined 0.6% primarily due to a decline in Asia Pacific of 3.2%. Growth in India of 6.6%, reflecting last year’s strong new business momentum, was offset by a 15.4% decline in China, due to a challenging macro and client environment," said WPP in a press release.

Global Integrated Agencies revenue less pass-through costs declined 0.7%, with 2.4% growth in GroupM offset by a 3.3% decline at integrated creative agencies with the loss of assignments at a healthcare client and reduced spend at technology companies.

The conglomerate posted new client assignment wins from AstraZeneca, Canon, Molson Coors, Daiichi Sankyo, Nestlé, Perfetti, Perrigo, Rightmove and Telefónica in the quarter. Q1 at WPP saw net new billings of $0.8bn (Q1 2023: $1.5bn).

"Strong progress on the strategic initiatives laid out at our CMD in January. Burson, GroupM and VML on track to deliver targeted in-year savings and well-placed to benefit from a strong pipeline," read WPP's statement. 

The conglomerate also upheld its "continued strategic progress" on AI initiatives. WPP Open has been adopted by 50,000 of its people. Recently, it announced a tie-up with Google to integrate Gemini 1.5 Pro into WPP Open.

Mark Read, Chief Executive Officer of WPP, said, "The first quarter of 2024 was very much in line with our expectations with performance reflecting the toughest comparator of the year.

“Strategically, we have progressed well on the priorities set out at our Capital Markets Day at the end of January. We’ve rolled out multiple AI tools through our intelligent marketing operating system WPP Open, including the latest foundation models from Bria, Google and OpenAI, and at Google Cloud Next we launched our Performance Brain to predict the best-performing content ahead of campaigns going live. These products are being deployed at scale, together with investment in training for our people. WPP Open was also at the heart of our most recent new business successes, including major media wins with Nestlé.

“Structurally, VML is now well established and is on track to deliver savings. GroupM is progressing well with its simplification and Burson will be operational in July. I’m very pleased with the progress we are making and we are already seeing the benefits of a simpler and more agile structure for our clients.

“Our outlook for the full year is reiterated. We remain on track to return to growth in the balance of the year, supported by an encouraging new business pipeline and the strength of our business creatively and in media, both powered by new AI capabilities, while our simpler structure will drive organisational flexibility and stronger cash conversion.”