MAM
Essence hires Sonali Malaviya as VP – client partner
MUMBAI: Essence, a data-driven global agency and a part of GroupM, has announced the appointment of Sonali Malaviya as the vice president – client partner. She will be reporting to Anand Chakravarthy, managing director, Essence India and will lead the Google relationship, based in the Gurgaon office.
With experience of more than 15 years, Malaviya is a seasoned marketing professional working with global brands and companies. Prior to Essence, she was the COO of Colorbar Cosmetics. She was also the India Country Marketing lead at Twitter and helped set up and navigate the company’s marketing offering to some of the biggest domestic and international brands in the market. Malaviya was also a principal partner at Mindshare Delhi and has done stints in leading media agencies and a research firm.
“Sonali’s diverse experience and her width of exposure working on both the agency and the client side, makes her a real asset to have at Essence and the ideal choice to steward our longstanding relationship with Google. Bring onboard key leadership like Sonali is priority to Essence building a strong differentiated offering in India,” said Chakravarthy.
Sonali Malaviya, Vice President, Essence India said, “I am excited to join the team at Essence in building an integrated, world class marketing product in India. As one of the few digitally led full service agencies, it gives us the opportunity to create breakthrough work for our clients, and I look forward working with this dynamic team of professionals.”
As the agency continues to scale globally, India and APAC remain a key growth region due to Essence’s commitment to deliver its proposition to its existing client roster across greater geographies, and to support the abundance of new business activity. India, in particular, holds strong strategic importance given its status as a dominant and dynamic growth market within the region.
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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.
