MAM
Ajit Balakrishnan on IAA’s next webinar
MUMBAI: International Association of Advertisers (India Chapter) has announced its next webinar on ‘World goes Digital’ on 23 May at 3.00 pm.
Rediff.com founder and CEO Ajit Balakrishnan will be the speaker at this webinar being held on Google Hangout.
IAA India Chapter president Srinivasan K Swamy said, “IAA’s first webinar with Rajan Anandan in April was an impressive success. We had nearly 200 people participating and more than 1000 people seeing it on our YouTube channel later. And, I am confident that this second webinar will have at least twice the number. IAA is providing a small service for young professionals and others to learn more about the digital medium.”
Free Press Journal director Abhishek Karnani and Mahindra Special Services Group head – marketing and public relations Manish Advani are co-chairing the IAA webinar series.
“This series of ‘World Goes Digital’ webinars is aimed at equipping professionals across age groups with what’s happening in the digital domain. Ajit can distill all the digital trends and nuances and bring it down to specifics,” said Karnani.
“Marketers need to evolve based on time, place and circumstance. Youth is a catalyst of change. IAA would like to inspire the youth to explore the opportunities digital media presents through digital gurus like Ajit Balakrishnan,” said Advani.
Over the last few months, the IAA (India Chapter) has conducted a series of activities – the IAA Leadership Awards, a unique gender sensitisation seminar and the IAA Olive Crown Awards. Every month, the IAA also conducts “IAA Debates” in different cities, on topical issues concerning the industry.
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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.
