MAM
Dentsu India promotes Rahul Vengalil to Managing Partner, Isobar
New Delhi: Isobar, the creative experience agency from dentsu India has promoted Rahul Vengalil to the role of managing partner.
Vengalil will report into Isobar India group CEO Heeru Dingra and will be responsible for building the business with creative & experience as the key focus for future growth.
Rahul’s digital expertise cuts across capabilities in business transformation, strategy, branding, experience, and innovation. Erstwhile, chief business officer (CBO), he has played an active role in driving the Isobar India growth story to newer heights and has added significant brands to the agency’s client roster, augmenting Isobar’s creative line of business exponentially, said the agency on Monday.
His first stint with Isobar India was in the year 2011 when he joined the agency as senior group head, and expanded the agency’s footprint across India, and set up Isobar’s first South branch in Bangalore. He moved on from Isobar at the start of 2017 to launch his own Audit & Digital transformation company – What Clicks and returned to the agency in 2020.
Speaking on the appointment, Isobar India group CEO Heeru Dingra said, “The solutions we offer are led by talents who possess extraordinary skillsets. Rahul is one of our finest resources with key domain expertise and with the thrill to set up new standards each time. His strategic-led, client-centric approach is in sync with our offerings. We are certain that he will accelerate Isobar’s growth trajectory for India.”
Commenting on his elevation, Vengalil added, “I am extremely excited to begin this fresh chapter at Isobar India. My experience with Isobar has transformed my journey; and now is the time to set up new benchmarks. We have an awesome team of innovative and creative folks who are aligned with Isobar’s global vision of transforming into the most creative experience agency, worldwide. With our ‘Invent Make Change’ agenda, we are committed to being instrumental in creating an experience economy within India.”
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.
