MAM
Bharat Ranga elevated from ad sales to business head Zee Cinema, Music
MUMBAI: Bharat Ranga, ad sales head of Zee Cinema and Zee Music, has been elevated to the position of business head of the two channels.
Additionally, his portfolio will also include responsibility as the business head of the three new cable launches Premier, Classic and Action Cinema that Zee has just launched. The three channels were earlier exclusive to Zee’s DTH platform, Dish TV.
With the appointment of Ranga, Zee Telefilms director, special projects Yogesh Radhakrishnan will no longer be looking after the day to day business affairs of these channels. He will now be focussing on international assignments including setting up business base in Dubai media city and the ambitious Zee Cine awards.
An old hand at Zee, Ranga had joined Zee Telefilms in March 1998. With the right mix of media and consumer durable experience, he was handling the sales and marketing of Zee Records. He was instrumental in organising the Zee Cine Awards in its inaugural year 1999-2000. During the same time he also handled the film and music advertising exposure business for the entire network, inform company sources.
In 2002, he took charge as ad-sales head of Zee Cinema and Zee Music.
A postgraduate in business management from the University of Ajmer, Ranga has earlier had stints with The Times of India and Usha International as regional sales manager.
Despite numerous efforts, Ranga could not be contacted for his comments at the time of filing this report.
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.
