MAM
Deloitte turns the page as Ritwick Udayan steps in to drive big rewrites
MUMBAI: When growth stories need a rewrite rather than a quick edit, Deloitte has made a decisive hire. The consulting major has appointed Ritwick Udayan as executive director, adding senior firepower to its leadership bench in growth strategy, portfolio transformation and large-scale business turnarounds. The move signals a sharper push towards market-led, experience-based decision-making as clients across tightly regulated sectors look for sustainable performance gains rather than short-term fixes.
In his new role, Udayan will work across sectors such as education management, healthcare and BFSI, focusing on governance, operational discipline and long-term value creation. His mandate centres on helping organisations navigate complexity, improve performance and make decisions rooted in both data and lived customer experience.
Udayan brings more than two decades of leadership experience spanning energy, education, healthcare and financial services. Most recently, he served as global head of HMG business at Husk Power, where he led mini-grid operations across India, Nigeria, Sub-Saharan Africa and the US, managing scale, profitability and cross-market execution. Earlier stints at Timespro and Healthspring saw him oversee P&L responsibilities, digital transformation programmes and customer experience strategy in fast-evolving consumer-facing businesses.
His grounding in financial services runs deep. Over several years with the ICICI Bank Group and Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, Udayan worked across retail banking, lending, product and channel management and bancassurance, building a track record in scaling businesses and leading high-performance teams in regulated environments.
At Deloitte, that mix of operational rigour and transformation experience is expected to play a key role as clients rethink portfolios, sharpen governance and recalibrate growth strategies amid tighter scrutiny and shifting market dynamics. In an era where steady hands matter as much as bold ideas, Deloitte’s latest appointment suggests it is betting on both.
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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.
