MAM
Maxus drives off with Redbus.in media biz
MUMBAI: Maxus has the WON the media business on redBus.in in the recently conducted pitch process. Redbus.in, an online bus ticket-booking site recently started advertising on television and other mass media.
The development follows a highly contested pitch with Mindshare, Madison, ZO and Mudramax.
Maxus is on a roll yet again in 2013 with the wins like Nestle Digital in Delhi, Tata Tea in Bangalore.
Redbus.in, an online bus ticket-booking site recently started advertising on television and other mass media.
Maxus South GM Sanchayeeta Verma said “redBus is a highly reputed name in the travel space. We are very excited with this win and believe our role is to help our clients navigate & maximize the opportunities of change in an always-on, fully digitized media world. And we’re looking forward to partnering redBus in their exciting journey towards exponential growth”.
Redbus.in CMO LK Gupta said, “As an ecommerce travel brand launching in mass media for the first time, we were looking for the right blend of aggressive presence, yet delivering efficiently for the business. In Maxus, we found a partner that showed innate understanding of what our business needs are, and complementing it with sound planning & buying capabilities in media. We’re excited to embark on this exciting journey during which we’re sure Ajit and his team will be big contributors.”
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.
