MAM
BeanstalkAsia creates brand campaign for Nepal’s Surya Life Insurance featuring celebrated singer Indira Joshi
MUMBAI: Aimed at creating awareness for the Life Insurance segment in Nepal, Surya Life Insurance – a leading player in the category in Nepal, roped in celebrated singer Indira Joshi –popular for being a judge on the Nepal Idol television show, as their Brand Ambassador earlier this year.
BeanstalkAsia has conceptualised and created a musical campaign utilising the full potential of the versatile and popular singer as the brand ambassador. The melodic brand song is young, peppy, positive and has a stickiness that people would love to hear and sing-along. While the brand song translates the ethos of the brand and conveys the promise of trust and service excellence, the brand film reflects the imagery of a happy and content family secured by Surya Life Insurance. Aptly captured by their positioning “Your Future, Our Responsibility.”
Explaining the campaign BeanstalkAsia founder Upendra Singh Thakur –r, said, “Firstly, there isn’t much product differentiation across Life Insurance companies as it’s a highly regulated industry. Secondly, life insurance as a category has a very poor awareness and weak penetration in general, hence there was a need for a campaign that catches attention and has stickiness. The sing-able brand song and film conveys the promise of trust and assurance of our service delivery and will help uplift and spread awareness about the category as well. The musical film written and directed by Mr. Janak Deep Parajuli, portrays a happy family/people picture, something that the Surya (which means the Sun in English) always emanates – warmth, brightness, protection and positivity.”
Speaking about the association with singer Indira Joshi Surya Life Insurance CEO Shiva Nath Pandey commented “It has been a delight to associate with Indira Joshi as the brand ambassador of Surya Life Insurance. She is a popular youth icon, and is a household name in Nepal . Her popularity coupled with her confident, dependable and trustworthy persona identify with the brand and make her a perfect brand fit. I am confident that a popular celebrity such a Indira Joshi will surely bring the category and its importance, to the public lime light and help create a strong positive brand imagery for Surya Life Insurance.”
BeanstalkAsia Nepal head of business, strategy and planning Suboh Thapa further added that, “As a first phase of this association, we have launched the brand campaign, positioned on the trust and assurance messaging, to grab mass attention and spread awareness about both the brand and the category. Presently the campaign will be promoted through the brand’s social media handles and through other digital mediums. Once the lockdown eases and more relaxations come in force, integrated approach across TV, print, radio, theatres and other strategic mediums will be rolled out. Going forward we have many activations planned with the mission to educate the people of Nepal on the many benefits of having a life insurance.”
BeanstalkAsia is a new age creative advertising and digital agency in India and we expanded our footprints to Nepal by setting-up our company and office in Kathmandu in 2019. Drawing from our varied and successful experiences in the Indian market in the fields of brand strategy, mainstream advertising, digital marketing, web-based solutions, mobile applications and high-end graphic design, BeanstalkAsia offers a series of similar services under the aegis of BeanstalkAsia Nepal managed by Mr. Aman Singh Pradhan as the local partner in Nepal.
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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.
