MAM
Acko extends partnership with Chennaiyin FC as associate sponsors
Mumbai: Two-time Indian Super League (ISL) champions Chennaiyin FC (CFC) has extended its association with digital insurer Acko General Insurance as an associate sponsor on a multi-year deal.
CFC and Acko shared a fruitful association after joining hands for the first time in the 2020/21 season of the football league. Through this partnership, CFC along with Acko will look to strengthen their association and engage with the former’s passionate fan base across the country, said the statement.
The association will be amplified with a 360-degree campaign across television, digital content and social media integrations. To drive fan engagement, Acko will also work with CFC to bring fans closer to the club as the ISL will be hosted once again in Goa in a bio bubble, it added.
“After a successful first year of the partnership last season, we’re glad to welcome Acko General Insurance back as part of the CFC family,” said CFC co-owner Vita Dani. “The faith that Acko has displayed in Chennaiyin FC is clear in the multi-year renewal that the brand has chosen to enter into with the club.”
As a part of the deal, Acko’s logo will feature on the right chest position of CFC’s kit. Through this association, both brands will work together to solidify their brand narrative that highlights ‘trust’ as a key factor while buying insurance and on the football pitch.
“Last year, we created some mini-game screenings to help the fans of CFC watch their favourite football team and we are hoping to increase further engagement with the fans,” said Acko General Insurance executive vice president of marketing Ashish Mishra. “CFC and Acko, in association with Akshaya Patra, have also undertaken various local initiatives to help the people of Chennai during the times of Covid-19.”
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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.
