AD Agencies
Call for entries: 15 IAA Olive Crown Awards celebrates sustainability
MUMBAI: Can creativity save the planet? The India chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA), in collaboration with the Asian Federation of Advertising Associations (AFAA), has opened the call for entries for the 15 edition of the Olive Crown Awards. These prestigious awards honour creative excellence in sustainability communication, celebrating work that inspires positive change.
Now in its 15 year, the Olive Crown Awards continue to grow in influence and stature. Speaking about this milestone, IAA president Abhishek Karnani remarked, “We are delighted that the Olive Crown Awards are now in their 15th year. These awards salute creative excellence in communicating sustainability and are a very meaningful set of awards. The awards have grown in stature year on year and, in fact, won the IAA recognition from Earthday.Org, the largest environmental movement in the world.”
True to its mission, the Olive CroThe creatives for this campaign were designewn Awards invite entries from across India, Asia, and Europe, fostering a global platform for creativity that champions sustainability. What’s more, there are no entry fees for this initiative, making it an accessible opportunity for creators everywhere.
Olive Crown Awards chairman Surinder Chawla added, “We are very happy to receive entries from all over India as well as from countries across Asia as well as Europe. Run as a cause, there are no entry fees for this initiative.”
The deadline to submit entries is 10 February 2025. Participants can share their submissions via the official awards website: https://ocawards.awardor.com.
The creatives for this campaign were designed as a labour of love by The Garage Worldwide Team, Rujvi Sankpal – Visualiser, Aman Vashisht – Senior Copywriter & Raj Nair – CCO.
With sustainability taking centre stage in global conversations, awards like the Olive Crown Awards serve as a powerful reminder of the role creativity can play in driving environmental change. Will your ideas inspire the next wave of action?
Submit your entries now and join the movement to spotlight creativity that matters.
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.
