MAM
Bright Outdoor outdoes itself in FY25
MUMBAI: The lights are definitely on and someone’s at home at Bright Outdoor Media. India’s first listed out-of-home advertising firm has delivered a corker of a year, with total income soaring 19 per cent to Rs 128 crore and net profit jumping nearly 19 per cent to Rs 19 crore in the fiscal year ending March 2025.
The numbers tell a gleaming story. Earnings per share climbed to Rs 13.11 from Rs 11.45, whilst EBITDA expanded a healthy 18 per cent to Rs 27 crore. The second half proved particularly bright, with income surging 22 per cent half-on-half to Rs 70 crore—suggesting the company’s momentum is accelerating rather than dimming.
For a firm that started life in 1980 flogging billboard space, Bright Outdoor has certainly illuminated its path to prosperity. The Mumbai-based outfit now commands over 400 hoardings nationwide, including a hefty chunk of the city’s 85 large digital LED displays. That’s no small feat in a market where prime real estate comes at a premium and visibility is everything.
The company’s recent coups read like a property developer’s wishlist. Bright Outdoor has bagged exclusive advertising rights for the entire Navi Mumbai Metro Line 1—a decade-long deal covering 85,000 square feet of prime eyeball territory. Not content with underground domination, it also secured a seven-year contract with Western Railways, adding another 17,555 square feet of high-visibility real estate to its empire.
Chairman & managing director Yogesh Lakhani is clearly more than pleased with the results. His company has been on a billboard-buying spree, unveiling 13 new LED displays across Mumbai’s most coveted spots—from the Goregaon flyover to the Eastern Express Highway. The digital expansion adds 12,569 square feet of advertising space to Bright’s already impressive portfolio.
Shareholders have reason to smile beyond the robust financials. The board has recommended a five per cent dividend (Rs 0.50 per share) and proposed a generous 1:2 bonus issue—one free share for every two held. It’s a clear signal that management believes the good times will keep rolling.
The outdoor advertising market has been riding high on India’s economic growth and urbanisation boom. Digital displays, in particular, have become the new battleground as advertisers seek more dynamic, targeted campaigns. Bright Outdoor’s focus on high-traffic transit corridors and tech-savvy solutions appears to be paying dividends—quite literally.
From cinema slides to full train wraps, the company’s diverse offerings have attracted over 5,000 corporate clients and facilitated campaigns for more than 200,000 movies, TV shows and events. Its claim to fame includes being the first globally to install solar panels on hoardings, supplying electricity back to Indian Railways—proof that being green can indeed mean more greenbacks.
Trading on the BSE SME platform since March 2023, Bright Outdoor has certainly lived up to its billing as a “game changer” in the IPO landscape. With urban India’s appetite for advertising showing no signs of dimming, this billboard baron looks set to keep the lights on—and the profits flowing.
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.
