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Bharat Media recruits Sumaiya Shaikh Vaidya in biz development role
MUMBAI: From being an executive assistant or administrator for almost 10 years in various companies in the beginning of her career, to associate director business development at the Bharat Media & Entertainment group (BMEG), Sumaiya Shaikh Vaidya has progressed extremely well.
Her first big break outside the EA or admin role came when she was appointed as a deputy manager at India News in charge of revenue generation from the western Indian region – a position she enjoyed for two years. Following this, she moved to Star TV as a senior sales executive , hopping on to dailyhunt for five months as regional manager, and then back to Disney Star for more than five years, leaving it in December 2024 as assistant manager looking after revenues for Star Suvarna SD, HD & Plus. In between she dabbled in short assignments for companies such as Red Digital Cinema, Aidem Ventures and dailyhunt.
Her motto all along has been “to seek a higher level of work to expand my experience.”
BMEG is headed by Andy Charles and is a marketing service company with expertise in media planning and buying skills, strategic brand building, OOH + experiential, and creative design solutions. It has offices in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi , Chennai, Kochi, Hyderabad and Kolkata with new age clients such as Dangal, Linc, KochiKodens, Rapido, Bombay Shaving Co, IDBI Bank, among a long list of others.
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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.
