MAM
AI reshapes market research: insights get faster, sharper, smarter
MUMBAI: The Market Research Society of India (MRSI) turned the spotlight on AI’s game-changing role in insights at a buzzing webinar on 25 June, titled The Future is AI: Revolutionising Market Research for Tomorrow’s Insights.
Hosted by independent marketing measurement consultant Sunder Muthuraman, the session featured , Ipsos India practice lead – innovation, understanding & client advisory India Krishnendu Dutta, and ITC Foods, vice president – head of insights and analytics Vara Prasad.
Vara Prasad kicked things off by breaking down AI’s impact on market research—declaring traditional methods slow and outdated in a world that demands speed and scalability. At ITC Foods, AI now does the heavy lifting: mining public data, analysing sentiment in customer care calls, listening to social chatter for trend-spotting, and even crafting product concepts. With predictive dashboards in the mix, AI is also helping sharpen business strategy. “AI needs context to shine,” said Prasad, adding that when trained right, it can evolve into a serious innovation engine.
Krishnendu Dutta pulled back the curtain on Ipsos’s “Facto” — a bespoke AI sandbox built for researchers to safely explore new tools without the chaos. From translation to topline extraction and even creating agentic personas that replace dusty old segmentation decks, Facto is bringing AI to daily insight generation. Ipsos is also tapping into synthetic data to stretch the life and depth of small datasets.
But both speakers hit pause on the hype with a key reminder: AI won’t replace humans—it’ll supercharge them. Whether it’s prompt engineering, model training or strategic activation, the real magic still needs a human touch.
To watch the full session, click here.
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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.
