MAM
Carat Media bags Eye-Q media account
MUMBAI: Eye-Q, the chain of super specialty eye hospitals in North India, has awarded its media duties to Carat Media.
Eye-Q, which is founded and run by a group of former IIM Ahmedabad graduates and eye specialists who set up this business in 2007, said in a statement that it is planning sizeable investments on the media front and a high profile media campaign worth over Rs 150 million is taking shape at Carat Media.
Eye-Q has 15 hospitals running in North India. The chain plans to set up about 100 such centres in Tier II towns of India over the next four years as its business model is oriented towards offering “best quality, technology-based eye care facilities at reasonable prices in smaller cities and towns of India”.
Eye-Q said that in order to scale greater heights and to establish itself as the most credible entity in the Indian private eye care market, it has now entrusted its comprehensive media planning and buying duties to Carat Media.
Carat Media Sr VP Vidhu Sagar said, “Carat is proud to be chosen by Eye-Q as their media partner. We will be partnering Eye-Q in the media communications management exercise holistically – so we will manage the entire set of media responsibilities encompassing planning, buying and execution. And of course, we shall endeavour to do this with the help of all pertinent media platforms – including Print, Digital, OOH as well as Activation.”
Eye-Q CEO Rajat Goel added that Eye-Q brand is now mature enough to take the next step forward and present itself as a paragon of excellence in the field of eye care. “Eye-Q is increasingly becoming synonymous with advanced eye care at easy prices and our track record remains unmatched. We shall ensure that with our new communications approach which will be combined with greater market spread, our patients and prospects will get to see the real Eye-Q difference.”
Carat is part of the Aegis Media India Group that also includes Vizeum, Posterscope the global OOH sector leader, Brandscope, Hyperspace (Retail), Carat Fresh Integrated (Activation), PSI (Airports), Doosra (Creative), Isobar, the global communications agency and iProspect, the global leader in search and performance marketing.
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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.
