MAM
Dentsu India appoints Malvika Mehra as chief creative officer
MUMBAI: Dentsu India – the holistic brand solutions agency from the house of Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN), has roped in Malvika Mehra, erstwhile founder and creative director of Tomorrow Creative Lab, as chief creative officer. As part of the mandate, Mehra will now be responsible for the agency’s creative duties across all offices. Dentsu India will also launch Dentsu India Tomorrow Lab – the new design and innovation unit, under her creative leadership.
More than two decades of successfully partnering clients in building famous brands across two advertising agencies (Ogilvy and Grey), and her own independent venture, Tomorrow, has earned Malvika a prominent name in the industry. Some of her more famous brand work has been on ITC Foods’ Bingo!, Vodafone, State Bank of India, Gillette, Reliance Telecom, Dell, Fiat, Honda, Duracell, and the Indian Army.
As an entrepreneur, under the Tomorrow brand, Malvika has handled brand strategy, design and communication for the artificial intelligence and data analytics company, Fractal Analytics Inc, Hindustan Unilever Ltd, Ashiana Housing, NDTV, Arvind Group, Hotstar, Oyo Rooms, Awfis Co-working Spaces, Streamcast Technologies, Vivaana Hospitality, and Generico Chemists amongst others.
A two-time Cannes Gold Lion and D&AD pencil winner, Malvika has served jury duty across categories like film, print and design at international advertising and design festivals like Cannes, Clio and Spikes Asia.
Speaking on the new appointment, Dentsu India CEO Simi Sabhaney said, “I am delighted to welcome Malvika to the Dentsu family. I have worked with her in the past, and I must say it was a rather fruitful experience. I respect Malvika for her fine design thinking ability, entrepreneurial spirit and her hunger to create great work that works.”
Malvika Mehra said, “Change is the only constant. Anyone worth his or her salt interested in creating game changing brands of the future, needs to be agile and learn to adapt, quickly. Joining Dentsu India as CCO, has been the most interesting pivot in my entrepreneurial journey. With the backing of the robust, truly collaborative DAN network and teams and a solid, go-getter business partner in Simi, I get to play that fancy word, intrapreneur for real. And continue to place the brand, at the golden intersection of ideas (of course), but also design and technology, for all our amazing clients.”
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.
