MAM
Arthalpha adds market heavyweights to its boardroom to crunch smarter numbers
MUMBAI: When alpha meets intellect, the boardroom gets bullish
In a move that screams serious intent and sharp thinking, Arthalpha, the brainy kid on India’s quant-finance block, has just flexed its ambition with two big-ticket appointments. DSP Mutual Fund MD & CEO Kalpen Parekh has joined as board observer, and fintech founder & ex-banker Kunal Bajaj has come aboard as board advisor. Cue the calculators and champagne.
The appointments bring over 40 years of collective market muscle into Arthalpha’s strategic cockpit, reinforcing its focus on blending artificial intelligence with real-world experience. Call it machine learning with street smarts.
“We are delighted to welcome Kalpen Parekh and Kunal Bajaj to Arthalpha… Their strategic insights will be invaluable as we push the boundaries of quantitative finance,” said Arthalpha CEO & CIO Rohit Beri.
Parekh has been around the market block more than once. With a resume that reads like the Nifty’s who’s who—ICICI, Birla Sun Life, IDFC, and now DSP—he’s spent over 20 years shaping long-term investment playbooks and decoding market moods.
“Arthalpha’s approach to integrating human intelligence with advanced quantitative methods is truly groundbreaking… I look forward to supporting their mission,” Parekh said, dusting off any doubt about his hands-on involvement.
Meanwhile, Bajaj brings his own set of war stories. From power seats at Goldman Sachs Japan, Credit Suisse, CLSA and Jefferies, to founding Clearfunds, which later merged with MobiKwik, Bajaj has done it all—capital markets, M&A, and building fintechs from scratch.
“Arthalpha is at the forefront of quantitative finance innovation… I am excited to contribute to their strategic growth and product innovation,” Bajaj said, presumably while scanning charts for his next big bet.
With AI-powered investing sweeping the globe, Arthalpha wants to lead the pack—not trail it. And with its turbocharged board now stacked with two of the sharpest minds in finance, expect more disruption, smarter products, and a very interesting FY25.
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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.
