MAM
BIC Cello appoints Manos Nikolakis as general manager
MUMBAI: BIC Cello, India’s leading writing instruments company, announced the appointment of Manos Nikolakis as General Manager to lead its operations in India. Manos joins the BIC Cello team to drive the integrated growth strategy of the business and accelerate its development at home and abroad.
Manos is a BIC veteran having been with the company for more than 15 years. In his previous roles he led the business growth strategies for Greece, South Africa, Middle East, and South Asia. Before relocating to India, Manos was the General Manager for the Southern, East and Central Africa region, heading four BIC subsidiaries including South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi, and Zambia. In this capacity, he also set up the group’s newest subsidiary, BIC East Africa, in Kenya.
Commenting on the new appointment, Gonzalve Bich, Chief Executive Officer, BIC said, “India is a dynamic market with a relatively young population who demand new products and solutions to fit their evolving needs. With a proven track record and rich experience in developing markets, Manos is ideally placed to bring forward our BIC entrepreneurial spirit and work with our local team in India to drive our business forward.”
BIC Cello recently launched its largest stationery manufacturing unit in Asia near Vapi, Gujarat. The new manufacturing unit comes as the latest addition to BIC Cello’s existing network of factories placed in Daman and one in Haridwar, Uttarakhand. Renowned for its quality and innovative products, the company sells more than five million pens per day in India alone. Spread across 66 countries, BIC Cello continues to strengthen its position as a leader in the ballpoint pen segment.
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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.
