MAM
Mantri Group plans media spends of RS 400 mn for 2010
BANGALORE: Real estate developer Sunil Mantri Group unveiled its new corporate brand image and announced expansion plans in Bangalore today. The group has identified Bangalore as a strategic target for expansion.
The group also plans to spend around Rs.300-400 million towards media and communications, revealed Sunil Mantri Group chairman Sunil Mantri. Actors Radhika Menon and Aftab Shivdasani are the group’s brand ambassadors.
Sunil Mantri also announced 17 January as the launch of a Rs 700 million project, ‘Mantri Premero,’ in Bangalore.
“We are planning to spend around Rs 30 to 40 milliontowards communication for ‘Mantri Premero’, mainly across outdoor and print. You’ll see full page ads on the major newspapers of the city on the 17th,” informed Idb India (Idb) COO Evarist Rego while speaking with indiantelevision.com.
Idb handles the media buying and the creative work for the Sunil Mantri Group.
Rego said that Idb is exploring various options for mass media communications and brand building including local television and local radio, but that radio communications would be event based. Rego is also not averse to sponsoring a sports event like other real estate groups have done with the Karnataka Premier League (KPL).
The title sponsor for the KPL is Mantri Developers, headed by Sushil Mantri. Mantri Developers is also a realtor with projects in Bangalore, but it is a different company.
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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.
