MAM
Bhargava new DAN Performance Group CEO; Rubeena to lead iProspect
MUMBAI: iProspect India, the digital agency from Dentsu Aegis Network, has appointed Rubeena Singh as its CEO effective this December, as its former CEO Vivek Bhargava is being elevated to a larger role of CEO of DAN Performance Group.
Bhargava will head all the Digital Performance Agencies of Dentsu Aegis Media. In this new arrangement, Rubeena Singh will report into Vivek Bhargava.
Prior to iProspect India, Rubeena was COO, Moneycontrol.com for over three years, wherein she spearheaded business strategy, marketing, sales, operations and P&L. In her earlier 12-year stint with Network18, she has held various senior positions across its print and TV properties including Forbes India, CNBC TV18, CNBC Awaaz, CNN News 18 and News18 India. Before joining Network 18, Rubeena spent four years at Star TV India, where she helped build recognition for Star News in the highly cluttered Hindi news space.
Bhargava said, “Rubeena’s vast experience in all three media formats – broadcast, print and digital will give iProspect India a competitive advantage as the performance industry makes this transition. Moreover, having Rubeena lead iProspect India will allow me to launch the other performance brands of Dentsu Aegis Media into India.”
Singh said, “To me, the macro and micro trends of India becoming a truly digitally interconnected nation of over a billion people are now converging. This will have huge ramifications for businesses and how they connect with their customers. Having spent time in both print as well as TV media, I think the shift in allocation of media spends from traditional to digital will happen faster than thought before.”
“iProspect India will be in pole position to emerge as a trusted advisor to its clients, helping them navigate these tumultuous times and guide them on maximizing returns on their marketing and media spends,” she added
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.
