MAM
Aviva gives its customers a Grand Slam opportunity
MUMBAI: Life insurance company Aviva has announced that it will give six Indian youngsters in the age group of 12-15 years the opportunity to be a part of the year’s first tennis Grand Slam, The Australian Open, in early 2006.
The lucky six will be able to be a part of the Asutralian Open 2006 as ball boys and girls.
Aviva Ball-kids trials will take place in New Delhi in November. This is part of Aviva’s continued support and sponsorship of the Aviva Ballkids at the Australian Open. Aviva states that it is the first corporate ever to sponsor ball-kids at the Grand Slam tennis tournament and has a four-year deal from 2005 to 2008 with the Australian Open.
Over 100 children of Aviva Life Insurance policy holders will be recommended to the Australian Open to join in and participate in the All India Tennis Association (AITA) programme for the ballkids trials. Six will be selected to represent India.
Those selected will be part of a contingent of 36 Aviva Ball-kids from across Asia who will be flown to Australia in January to feature on court beside some of the biggest names in world sport, and be seen by hundreds of millions worldwide.
This initiative is a part of Aviva’s agenda to partner with the local community and provide opportunities to people the company is associated with. Trials of the youngsters put forward by the AITA and Aviva will take place on the weekend of 26-27 November 2005 in New Delhi. The selection process looks at a range of factors including hand-eye coordination, concentration levels, work ethic, reaction times, rolling of the ball and general tennis knowledge. The selected ball-kids will be flown to Melbourne in early 2006 for
further training to be ready for the Grand Slam tournament, which runs from 16-29 January 2006.
For the last two years, since 2003, youngsters have been selected from India, Korea, Singapore, China, Thailand and New Zealand to be ball kids at the Australian Open. This year will see Aviva Ball-kids selected from India, the Philippines, Singapore, Korea to be part of Australian Open 2006.
Aviva Life Insurance marketing director Vivek Khanna says, “Aviva believes that responsible investment in youth development and training plays an important part towards a more sustainable future. Aviva has a long association with sports and the Australian Open is one more step in promoting youngsters in that direction. We are very pleased to bring this to the Indian youth.
“We are always looking at innovative ways of connecting with our customers and this is yet another opportunity to reward our policy holders. Our Customers will recommend their children to be Aviva
ball kids at the Grand Slam next year.”
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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.
