MAM
AngelPrime invests Rs 3.2 crore in marketing tech start-up Vidgyor
MUMBAI: Seed-stage venture capital fund (VCF) AngelPrime has invested approximately Rs 3.2 crore ($500,000) in Vidgyor – a targeted video advertisement platform for Internet TV.
The Bangalore-based start-up enables broadcasters to monetize live TV streaming on the Internet by replacing standard TV advertisements with personalized video ads. The funding will help Vidgyor to expand their target user base, increase marketing efforts and further develop their technology.
Internet TV is gaining popularity in India with many viewers watching live news and TV. The proliferation of mobile devices, availability of low–cost Internet and changing lifestyles has fueled the growth of Internet TV in India. The Indian diaspora is also a huge market for the broadcasters with people wanting to stay connected with their country and its TV channels. Currently, Internet TV features the same ads, which run on broadcast TV. Video publishers are unable to monetize live TV streams delivered over Internet, as the advertiser has not paid for showing them online. On the other hand, advertisers are unable to reach out to the online audience who prefer watching TV over Internet through a mobile device.
Vidgyor started a year back with the vision of enabling broadcasters and content distributors to monetize live TV streams delivered over internet by auto-detecting original broadcast TV ads and replacing them with different set of targeted mid-roll ads. The organization has developed a technology platform that can effectively provide incremental revenue through deployment of mid rolls.
Vidgyor enables personalized ad targeting and provides high quality user experience to the end user. Advertisers also benefit more from this model, as they will now be able to reach out to the right audience and user base. The Vidgyor platform can integrate with any VAST compliant video ad network and also provides a dashboard to track revenue and manage campaigns in real-time.
AngelPrime managing partner Bala Parthasarathy said, “Personalized advertising for live TV over Internet has largely been an untapped market in the country. Broadcasters, so far, have been unable to monetize live streaming through Internet and Vidgyor aims to help them address this effectively. We see a huge potential for start-ups such as Vidgyor in the ad-tech solution space. We are excited to partner with them and support them in their growth.”
IndiaTV vice president – digital Anushrav Gulati added, “Vidgyor’s innovative solution has enabled IndiaTV to generate revenue from our Live TV streams. We are exploring synergies to use the solution with our global content distributors.”
Vidgyor co-founder Mahaboob Khan said, “We are very happy to partner with AngelPrime and are sure this partnership will boost our growth. The AngelPrime team is known for its expertise in mentoring seed –stage startups and we hope to benefit from their collective experience. We have already signed up with leading broadcasters and aim to achieve a positive growth in the near future.”
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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.
