MAM
Airtel Payments Bank appoints Anuj Bansal as chief financial officer
Mumbai: Airtel Payments Bank, India’s only profitable multi-segment fintech operating at scale with a banking license, today announced the appointment of Anuj Bansal as its chief financial officer.
Anuj will be responsible for overall financial strategy, including corporate financial planning, budgeting, supply chain, and treasury management. He will be a part of the Bank’s Executive Committee and will be working closely with Anubrata Biswas, MD and CEO of Airtel Payments Bank.
Anuj has been recognised amongst the ‘Top 100 finance professionals’ across India by CFO India in December 2020.
Commenting on the appointment, Airtel Payments Bank MD and CEO Anubrata Biswas said, “Airtel Payments Bank is rapidly expanding across all its lines of business and equally so in its depth and breadth of talent. Adding Anuj with his vast experience across different industries combined with his deep domain knowledge will play a vital role in further powering the Bank’s unique position in India.”
Airtel Payments Bank chief financial officer Anuj Bansal said, “Airtel Payments Bank with its unique business model has been serving the financial needs of the country. It’s differentiated positioning gives it an advantage to be relevant and purposeful for Indian digital customers and that has ensured sustainable growth for it over the years. I look forward to collaborating with the team to support the Bank in achieving its strategic goals and expansion plans.”
Anuj brings over 23 years of progressive experience in financial services and other sectors such as the automobile sector. His areas of expertise include business planning, investor relations, strategy formulation, global financial operations, finance & accounting management, and treasury Management.
Before joining Airtel Payments Bank, Anuj was with MasterCard India as Vice President – Financial Planning & Analysis, where he led the Business Finance Centre to support the global FP&A operations for the organisation. Prior to this, he worked with Max New York Life Insurance (now Max Life), Aviva Life Insurance Co. India Ltd., Royal Enfield (Unit of Eicher Motors) and others.
Anuj is a Chartered Accountant and an alumnus of Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University, where he acquired his degree in Bachelor of Commerce.
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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.
