MAM
Phanimohan Kalagara named new CTO at Pine Labs
Mumbai: Merchant commerce platform Pine Labs on Wednesday announced the appointment of Phanimohan Kalagara as its new CTO.
Kalagara is an MS in computer science from Utah State University and has over two decades of experience working with companies in the United States and India. He has extensive experience in the field of technology having worked in e-commerce, financial technology, and the CAD/CAM industries. He also brings expertise in emerging technologies like virtual reality.
“We have made several new appointments in the past one year to bolster our technology capabilities. I am delighted to welcome Phanimohan as the new CTO,” stated Pine Labs CEO B Amrish Rau. “Phani comes with a wealth of experience in product and engineering and is the right man to lead our technology team during this exciting phase of growth for the company. I would also like to acknowledge the role of his predecessor Sanjeev Kumar who will now move into a new role within the company and head the R&D vertical.”
Prior to joining Pine Labs, Kalagara was with e-commerce company Flipkart where he was the SVP of product and engineering. He has also spent 12 years with global fintech company PayPal where he was leading product and engineering and spent nearly eight years in the United States working on several key assignments for the company.
“It is not often that we get an opportunity to play a key role in a company that gets to shift the industry landscape. I have been blessed a couple of times earlier in my career to make a meaningful difference in such companies,” said Kalagara. “With Pine Labs, I see a massive opportunity to make a substantial difference to the future of merchant commerce in Asia. Looking forward to being part of this team that is set to shift the fintech landscape in Asia.”
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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.
