AD Agencies
McCann Worldgroup India announces key creative leadership
MUMBAI: McCann Worldgroup has announced key senior creative leadership changes: promotions, and inclusion of senior level talent, for its India operations.
Pradyumna Chauhan and Prateek Bhardwaj have been assigned the position of joint National Creative Directors. Both will report to McCann Worldgroup executive chairman and CEO and south Asia president Prasoon Joshi.
Announcing the changes, Joshi said, “As an agency we are committed to our clients’ business and do everything possible to bring the best and most cutting-edge talent onboard. These are carefully selected professionals in whom I have great faithand high expectations. I am positive that they will further enhance our creative product and add yet another dimension to the McCann offering.”
Chauhan has been with McCann for a year, and comes with over a decade and a half of experience across brands such as MP Tourism, Star Network, Airtel, ICICI Bank, Birla Sun life, Asian Paints and others.
This is Bhardwaj’s second stint with McCann. He has extensive experience in the industry across agencies and brands such as Sprite, Kinley, Chlormint, MasterCard, HP and Reebok. Bhardwaj co-founded and ran an independent agency, Eleven Brandworks, and brings along this entrepreneurial mindset, together with the exposure to big brands.
These two talents shall further bolster McCann’s creative prowess. “McCann has a stellar creative reputation, and I am excited with the new role. I look forward to taking the agency to greater heights,” said Chauhan. Bhardwaj added here, “Having worked here earlier and having seen the world I am certain that I can tangibly add value to our clients with the new responsibility entrusted to us.”
Other senior creative leadership announcements include:
Mumbai:
Akshay Kapnadak and Abhinav Tripathi have been elevated to the role of Creative Heads of McCann’s advertising operations in Mumbai. Denzil Machado will now head McCann’s Craft Excellence for Mumbai. This trio will be responsible for the Creative Department in McCann, Mumbai.
South region:
McCann’s Creative Head for South, Anil Thomas, will now have extended responsibilities as his role expands across South Asia, where he shall provide creative inputs and vision on a need basis.
New Delhi:
ECDs Ravinder Siwach and Kapil Batra will continue to lead their respective responsibilities.
AD Agencies
Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
