MAM
Baggit eyes tier 1 & 2 cities for expansion
NEW DELHI: Expanding beyond the 3000-odd pin codes that it serves today with its delivery channels, Baggit will soon be touching more than 25,000 areas with its supply chain, diving deep into the hinterland India, brand’s head of marketing Atul Rohan Garg announced during the Beauty & Lifestyle Virtual Roundtable hosted by Indiantelevision.com on Saturday.
“I was reading some statistics provided by an e-commerce platform stating that metro cities are only contributing to 40-42 per cent of our sales and the rest 60 per cent is coming from the rest of the country. So, our focus is to touch more of tier 2, tier 3, and tier 4 cities,” he elaborated.
He added that his intention is not only to drive sales but be present as many touchpoints as the brand can. “This whole mechanism has the benefit to take customer feedback, which means I have a control on ROI from service-level and not only from a brand level.”
Additionally, the brand will soon be rolling out video calling facilities for its consumers to give them digital assistance while buying Baggit products.
Garg elucidated that for brands, it is not just about pedalling through the ongoing crisis but also maintain a strong foothold in the coming 2-3 years, which are going to be really rough. That’s why his core focus remains on strengthening the sales side capabilities of the brand.
For the production side, according to him, the advantage that the brand holds is that they design and manufacture in India. Therefore, it is easier for them to keep a vigil on the operations, quickly include client feedback, and maintain a robust system in place.
Speaking about his experience of managing the brand during the lockdown, Garg noted that the two things that really worked for the brand were influencer marketing and CRM.
“Influencers were not only making lookbooks for us but also remotely shooting campaign videos, going up to our stores and showing people how safe is that and were taking us to new markets. Our CRM, which is very strong, enabled people to shop online smoothly,” he quoted.
He also shared that their fully digital brand GG performed exceptionally well during the lockdown, surprising them with the response it got as they were not expecting sales to happen during the lockdown.
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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.
