MAM
Café Coffee Day makes management-level appointments post founder VG Siddhartha’s tragic demise
MUMBAI: Following the tragic demise of Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) founder VG Siddhartha, who was also known as the ‘Coffee King’ of India, the company board has made some key appointments in the top management. It has also resolved to thoroughly investigate the matters related to financial transactions, which were made outside the knowledge of the senior management, auditors, and the board, and were mentioned in Siddhartha’s last letter to his team and employees.
The Board has appointed SV Ranganath as the interim chairman of the board and Nitin Bagmane as an interim chief operating officer of the company. It has also constituted an executive committee comprising non-executive independent director SV Ranganath and CFO R Ram Mohan to exercise the powers previously vested with the chief executive officer of the company and the administrative committee constituted by the board in 2015.
It mentioned in a statement, “The board will, in due course, prepare a detailed charter of authorities vested in the executive committee and approve the same. The executive committee will, inter alia, explore opportunities to deleverage the Coffee Day group.”
VG Siddhartha went missing in the evening of 29 July while he was on his way to Mangaluru from Bengaluru. Around 6.30 pm, he asked his driver to stop the car at a bridge near Ullala and did not return. A panicked driver informed his family and the police. Siddhartha’s body was recovered from Netravathi river, today morning.
Before allegedly committing suicide, he had sent his employees a letter indicating that he is in debt. He also mentioned that tax authorities were harassing him.
Taking in account the same, the board wrote in its statement, “The board took cognizance of statements in the purported letter from VG Siddhartha relating to financial transactions outside the knowledge of the senior management, auditors and the board. While the authenticity of the letter is unverified and it is unclear whether these statements pertain to the company or the personal holdings of VG Siddhartha, the board took serious note of the same and resolved to thoroughly investigate this matter.”
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.
