MAM
Rajesh Rai is McCann Healthcare ECD
MUMBAI: McCann Healthcare has appointed Rajesh Rai as Sr. VP and ECD.
Rai moves in from Sorento Healthcare Communications where he was working as EVP and Chief Creative Officer.
McCann Worldgroup India executive chairman and CEO Prasoon Joshi said, “Healthcare and wellness is a strategic focus for McCann Worldgroup and I see tremendous potential for growth in this area. To further empower McCann Healthcare for robust growth and pioneering, game-changing work, Rajesh Rai will be joining as the ECD. I know him since my very early days in advertising. I have great memories of him as a professional and a person who led, motivated and guided. Rajesh will be a catalyst towards raising the bar of our creative product across Medical, Pharma and Consumer Healthcare marketing communication. And I see Rajesh and Sohan becoming a formidable team in the healthcare space”.
McCann Healthcare India Sr. VP and GM added, “Rajesh is a proficient leader driven by clear thinking that translates into effective creative solutions. I look forward to partnering with him to set new benchmarks for integrated healthcare communication in our industry.”
Rai brings in almost three decades of experience in the communication industry. He has been in the healthcare communication space since 2004.
Prior to this he has also worked with Ogilvy One as NCD and Everest Integrated Communications Ltd. (DY&R Agency) as VP and Sr. creative director.
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.
