MAM
CupShup promotes Sourav Kumar to co-founder
Mumbai: CupShup, a full-service agency has promoted Sourav Kumar to the position of co-founder. Prior to this, Kumar served as the growth head for over three years.
Kumar joined CupShup in 2018 and was the seventh employee then at the company. Joining as city manager for Delhi NCR region, he rose through the ranks strengthening operations, client servicing and account management, said the statement.
“We are delighted to have Sourav in this new role. The energy and passion was palpable even at the first meeting and Sourav has not just maintained but at times bettered it with time,” said CupShup co-founder Sidharth Singh. “His vast experience of working across different ecosystems and his agency acumen will bring in better efficiency and add to the creative talent we have in the team.”
In his new role, Kumar will be accountable for the overall growth of CupShup. Right from strategising sales, profitability, partnership, client relationship, retention programming, planning expansion strategy, and process building.
“I am excited and proud to take on the mandate of a co-founder at CupShup. I am thankful for Sidharth’s trust in my abilities and vision,” said Kumar. “CupShup has played a key role in my career graph, and I look forward to adding more to their growth as a company.”
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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.
