MAM
Aaj Tak to boost cricket team with ‘Jeeto India Jackpot’
MUMBAI: Looks like Aaj Tak is all set to tempt the Indian cricket! With the launch of the Jeeto India Jackpot campaign, the broadcasting arm of India Today has a heady mix of cricket and big money lined up for our cricketers playing at South Africa.
Aaj Tak has invited all its 22 million to contribute generously to make some big prize money. The money collected will be distributed equally among the 14 members of the cricket team, but there is a catch. The cricketer’s will be get the prize money only if they win the cricket World Cup 2003.
Just in case the cricket team does not bring back the cup, all the money will be returned back to the donors.
Aaj Tak CEO G Krishnan says: “It is our endeavour to be the people’s channel, and to air the sentiments of the people. With this jackpot, we plan to reach out to our viewers and give them a chance to contribute to their beloved cricketers’ success.”
To participate in the move to ‘encourage’ the cricketers, the audience will have to send a cheque worth minimum of Rs 500 to Aaj Tak at its New Delhi office along with the name, address, phone number and pin code on the back of the cheque.
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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.
