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Dentsu India on-boards Bhasker Jaiswal as chief operations officer, media
Mumbai: Dentsu India has announced the appointment of Bhasker Jaiswal as chief operations officer, media. As a member of the executive team, he will report to Dentsu South Asia chief executive officer, media, Divya Karani.
In his new role, Bhasker will lead integration, transformation, and operational excellence agendas while driving innovations and excellence for Dentsu clients and businesses through its three media agencies: Carat, iProspect, and Dentsu X. He will work closely with Divya Karani to deliver business transformation, set up and standardise operations and systems, govern product leadership, and enable sustainable revenue growth.
With over 24 years of experience in the media and advertising industry across APAC (India, Malaysia, China, and Singapore), Bhaskar specialises in building solutions for advertisers and media companies across monetisation, research, and media investments. His key strength lies in understanding the ecosystem of consumers, advertisers, and media owners, as well as the decision-making heuristic. He is passionate about disrupting the current thinking and has developed industry-leading proprietary products that bring efficiency and effectiveness across geographies and clients.
Speaking on the appointment, Divya Karani said, “Bhasker joining the team here in India is another great step on our journey to become the go-to network of choice for brands in India. His impressive track record, savvy business judgement, operational excellence, and an innate understanding of people and their motivations make him ideal to lead our transformation and integration.”
Bhasker Jaiswal commented, “I am excited to be joining Dentsu and being back in India, a big and complex market growing dynamically. I look forward to adding value by improving dentsu processes to impact client outputs as well as improving the lives of our biggest assets—our people.”
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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.
