MAM
Atique Kazi bids farewell to WPP Media after 13 years
MUMBAI: After more than a decade of shaping India’s digital advertising playbook, Atique Kazi has stepped away from WPP Media, bringing down the curtain on a 13 year leadership journey across data, performance, commerce and emerging tech.
Kazi’s exit marks the end of an era spent building some of the most influential digital and commerce capabilities within the WPP ecosystem, at a time when India emerged as one of the fastest transforming advertising markets globally.
Reflecting on his journey, Kazi called it a “very special chapter”, crediting the people, culture and timing that defined his run. He spoke of growing through multiple leadership roles across performance, programmatic, data and commerce, while contributing to what he described as truly transformative industry work.
At WPP Media and GroupM, Kazi most recently served as president for e-commerce, performance and digital products in India, a role he held from 2021. Before that, he spent eight years at Xaxis, including stints as managing director in India and vice president for new business in Singapore, helping scale programmatic offerings across markets.
Among the standout platforms built under his leadership were Xaxis India’s programmatic solutions, Turbine which grew into India’s largest scaled DMP, Finecast India’s connected TV advertising platform, and Inca APAC, an AI powered influencer marketing business spanning nine countries. He also helped establish full stack performance and commerce service suites that became central to client growth strategies.
Kazi was generous in his acknowledgements, thanking colleagues, mentors, clients and partners across the WPP network for their trust and collaboration. A special mention went to his teams, whom he credited for turning ambitious ideas into products that delivered consistent client impact, while still making time for the lighter moments along the way.
“WPP Media skilled me up in fostering innovation, continuous reinvention, client centricity and leading with purpose,” he said, adding that while it was not easy to say goodbye to a place that had long felt like home, the time felt right to embrace new opportunities.
Before WPP, Kazi built an international career spanning Yahoo, The Economist, The Times of India, JVC and Hutchison Whampoa, with roles across India, the Middle East, the UK and Singapore. Each stop added another layer to a career that blended media, technology and commercial strategy.
As he signs off from WPP Media, Kazi leaves behind a legacy of platforms, people and progress, and an industry keen to see what chapter he writes next.
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.
