MAM
Dentsu Impact appoints Aditya Kilpady as national planning head
MUMBAI: Dentsu Impact, the creative agency from Dentsu Aegis Network, has strengthened its strategic planning function by roping in Aditya Kilpady as the national planning head.
Kilpady will report to Amit Wadhwa, president of Dentsu Impact with a dotted line reporting to Narayan Devanathan, group executive and strategy officer, Dentsu Brand Agencies, South Asia.
Commenting on his new role, Aditya Kilpady says, “Marketers are expecting an integrated and synergistic approach to improve business and overall effectiveness. In this respect, collaboration is so crucial. Dentsu Impact has triggered a transformation with a singular vision to innovate the way businesses and brands are built. By bringing synergies in integration and seamlessness in ‘one solution’, I am looking forward to create a fantastic future for brands with my client and network partners.”
Aditya comes in with over two decades of cross-cultural experience across verticals and geographies. His previous stints have been with Contract India, Bates Malaysia & Singapore, FCB China & India, and Pratama Indonesia. He has been involved in strategic thinking that impacted bottom-lines of Indian and multi-national companies and been awarded for marketing effectiveness at EFFIEs and AMEs.
Talking about Kilpady’s joining the team, Devanathan mentions, “Over the past few years, there has only been one mantra behind Dentsu Impact’s stellar delivery to and beyond client expectations—a tight-knit group of talented people who believe in teamwork, and in together innovating the way brands can be built. Aditya is a stellar addition to the team—as much for his attitude as for his aptitude and experience. He will be instrumental in helping the agency create brave new solutions for a brave new world.”
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.
