MAM
Amitabh Bachchan terminates contract with pan masala brand, returns fees
Mumbai: Amitabh Bachchan has dissociated himself from a pan masala brand and has returned the fees that were paid to him to promote the brand. The veteran actor who turned 79 on Monday has terminated his contract with the pan masala brand, the actor’s office said in a statement, adding that he wasn’t aware that it “falls under surrogate advertising.”
This comes after the superstar had been requested by a national anti-tobacco organisation to withdraw himself from the ad campaign, which promoted pan masala, saying that it would stop youngsters from getting addicted to tobacco. His fans had also criticised the move.
An official statement released by his team read, “Kamala Pasand … a few days after the commercial was aired, Mr Bachchan contacted the brand and stepped out of it last week. Upon checking why this sudden move – it was revealed that when Mr Bachchan became associated with the brand, he wasn’t aware that it falls under surrogate advertising.”
“Mr Bachchan has terminated the contract with the Brand, has written to them his termination and has returned the money received for the promotion,” the statement further said.
Surrogate advertising is a form of advertising which is used to promote banned products, like cigarettes and alcohol, in the disguise of another product.
Last month in the letter to Bachchan, National Organisation for Eradication of Tobacco president Shekhar Salkar had said that medical research has proved that addiction to tobacco and pan masala decays the health of the citizens, especially the youth, and said that since he (Bachchan) is the government brand ambassador for the high profile pulse polio campaign, he should drop out from the pan masala ads as soon as possible.
Earlier while responding to a fan who questioned him on social media on his endorsement of the pan masala brand, Big B had replied: (Translated in English) “If someone is getting benefitted through a business, one should not wonder why we are joining them. If there is a business, we also have to think of our business. You feel I should not have done this, however, I am also getting paid for it. Moreover, the many people working in our industry also get work and livelihood through this.”
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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.
