MAM
Arvind Sharma to be conferred with AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award 2021
Mumbai: The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) announced on Monday that AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award for 2021 will be conferred on advertising veteran Arvind Sharma. This is the highest honour to be given to an individual in India for his/her outstanding contribution to the advertising industry.
Arvind Sharma, an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, has had a long and successful career in the Indian advertising industry. What made him a true industry leader was the way he managed to make people achieve more than what they thought they were capable of, said the association in a statement.
As a young leader, he was tasked with making a local agency, Chaitra, transition into the Indian arm of Leo Burnett Worldwide. Over two eventful decades, he created an organisation that was both formidable and flexible. In doing this, he turned a safe and conservative agency into a creative power center. Soon, the agency’s work on Thums Up, Bajaj, Heinz, P&G, and many others saw it taking on the big guns in creative pitches as well as award shows, becoming one of India’s early winners at Cannes.
Sharma has also been responsible for several incredible talents that have blossomed under his watch.
Making the announcement, AAAI president Anupriya Acharya stated, “Arvind Sharma has been a true pioneer. Apart from singlehandedly making Leo Burnett a top agency and a force to reckon with he has also groomed some of the finest talents in our industry. But more than that he has made a tremendous contribution to our industry across both the art and science of advertising. He is truly deserving of this honour.”
AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award selection committee chairman Ashish Bhasin said, “Arvind is a deserving winner of this prestigious honor. Not only has he been a successful advertising professional, he has also contributed significantly to the industry in various capacities, including as President of AAAI and a key driver in launching Goafest. I am pleased to say that the entire committee was unanimous in conferring this award upon Arvind.”
The AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award is presented annually to an individual who has been a practitioner of advertising for twenty-five years and had been in the top management position; has been or continues to be an active participant in industry bodies and or made significant contributions in shaping the industry priorities which enabled the advertising industry to grow, prosper and become more professionalised; individual known for his integrity, ethical practice and leadership qualities; contributed to his Company/Companies growth by innovative thinking and taking them in newer directions; involved in projects of social consequence which is seen as a role model for the industry at large and had been an industry veteran.
Some of the past winners of this award include Subhas Ghosal, Alyque Padamsee, Mike Khanna, R K Swamy, Piyush Pandey, Sam Balsara, Prem Mehta, Roda Mehta, Ram Sehgal, Madhukar Kamath, and others.
Formed in 1945, the AAAI is the national organisation of advertising agencies to promote their industry interests. The AAAI today comprises a very large number of small, medium, and large-sized agencies as its members, who together account for almost 80 per cent of the advertising business placed in the country.
AD Agencies
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.
