AD Agencies
Account Planning Group (APG) announces its board members for India Chapter
MUMBAI: The India Chapter of the Account Planning Group (APG) has announced the induction of Board Members that represent planning heads across major advertising agencies.
In keeping with its credo, the committee would work towards equipping planners and strategists with the training and inspiration they need to be bold and rigorous thinkers while also driving several initiatives for APG in India including its soon-to-be-announced Awards show.
APG members include DDB Mudra national planning head Amit Kekre, J Walter Thompson India chief strategy officer Bindu Sethi, Leo Burnett chief strategy officer of South Asia Dheeraj Sinha, Ogilvy India chief strategy officer Prem Narayan, Whyness Worldwide head of strategy and new business Roma Singhal, McCann Truth central national head, planning and executive VP and GM of McCann Mumbai Suraja Kishore, Lowe Lintas chief strategy officer S. Subramanyeswar and Publicis India chief strategy officer and managing partner Sudeep Gohil.
The APG got off to a commendable start in India at the end of 2017, and has since organised a couple of community-driven initiatives including the recently held workshop on Culture and Creativity by Whyness founder and chairman Ravi Deshpande. The committee has queued up several such workshops and training modules in the coming months, which would be hosted across key metros in India.
As of date, the APG is being led by a consortium of leading agencies from India including Ogilvy & Mather, J Walter Thompson, MullenLowe Lintas Group, Leo Burnett India, DDB Mudra Group, Publicis India, Taproot, Dentsu, Grey Worldwide, McCann Worldwide, L&K Saatchi & Saatchi, Famous Innovations, Rediffusion Y&R, Whyness Worldwide and others.
The Account Planning Group is a membership organisation that promotes smarter thinking. Headquartered in London, it is a not-for-profit organisation run for and by its members: primarily account planners in advertising agencies. It is expanding with a community of communications strategists, including media planners, channel planners, DM planners and digital planners.
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.
