MAM
CNBCI announces ‘Power breakfast’ with Sun’s McNealy
MUMBAI: As part of their integrated marketing communications cum public relations TV channels have been sponsoring India visits of celebrity celebrity head-honchos in addition to showcasing them through one-on-one interviews.
CNBC India, a leading business channel, has announced a “Power breakfast” with the Sun Microsystems CEO and co-founder Scott McNealy on the 21 March at 8:30 am at the Rooftop, Oberoi Towers, in Mumbai. Interestingly, the visit is McNealy’s first-ever to India after assuming his current role.
A power packed delegation representing the banking and finance industry is scheduled to attend the interaction with McNealy. ICICI Bank chairman KV Kamath will present the keynote at the CNBC “Power breakfast” session. Reliance India vice-chairman Anil Ambani will also be conducting an exclusive interview with McNealy. This is Ambani’s second high-profile interview attempt after his stint with BBC’s Tim Sebastian in Hard Talk.
Defining the roadmap for the future in an interactive session, McNealy will share perspectives on the impact of technology on the domestic banking and financial services sector. Banking and financial services are acknowledged globally as the largest sector, which has adopted technology.
Sun Microsystems — a company McNealy co-founded — is the
quintessential Silicon Valley success story. Since its inception in 1982, the company has grown to become the leading global supplier of network computing solutions, with revenues exceeding $13 billion. McNealy has steered Sun to constant growth and innovation.
McNealy graduated from Harvard with a BA in Economics and went on to complete an MBA from Stanford. Those two formative years on “the farm” soon spawned a little start up known as SUN, originally an acronym for the Stanford University Network.
A complete maverick, an amateur ice hockey player, McNealy shies away from controversial issues in the computer world about as much as he avoids a defenseman’s check in the rink. His tenacity and willingness to address tough issues head on has earned him both respect and admiration.
McNealy’s vision and business acumen have made him one of the most influential and widely quoted leaders in the complex, fluid, and fast-moving IT industry. McNealy’s ideas about computing often predate industry trends. For more than a decade, he has been advancing Sun’s slogan, “The Network Is The Computer” a succinct statement of the company’s vision of seamless connectivity.
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.
