MAM
Aakhya India appoints Archana Dutta as CEO
MUMBAI: Aakhya India has roped in Archana Dutta as their CEO. Prior to joining Aakhya, Dutta served as the director of loyalty at Hyatt Hotels for 5.5 years where she gained skills as a trainer, coach, and strategist. She also spent 17 years at Lufthansa German Airlines; there, she was the loyalty head for India and was at the forefront of corporate sales.
In her new role, she will expand the corporate portfolio for the company. She will also focus on developing and leading significant tools and capabilities within the Aakhya India team to help deliver enhanced integrated solutions to clients.
Aakhya India founder-president Kavita Datta said, “We’re extremely delighted to welcome Archana as the chief executive officer. Our niche for the last many years has been focused on 360-degree communications solutions to various state governments and ministries and multinational corporates, and we are now diversifying not just our client portfolio but also our services and deliverables. We believe that Archana’s dedication and experience will prove to be unmatched and we look forward to working with her to achieve new milestones.”
“It’s a apleasure to join Aakhya India as the CEO. Due to the pandemic, I have had to hit the ground running to ensure insulating our clients and partners in the best possible way. It’s amazing to see the team working so hard- some remotely and some on the ground during these difficult times, Dutta said.
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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.
