AD Agencies
dentsu X recognised as Indian agency with ‘highest quali-points growth over 3 years’: RECMA
Mumbai: RECMA, the independent research firm that evaluates media agencies, has recognised dentsu X, the media agency from the house of dentsu India, as the Indian agency with the highest quali-points growth over three years.
The report, RECMA Debrief number 37, evaluates the media agencies from 47 countries across nineteen criteria. For the record, out of the total number of 700 agencies, 27 have shown spectacular growth over three years with at least ten qualitative points.
“Dentsu has embraced the future by providing integrated idea-led, data-driven, tech-enabled solutions that offer our clients a competitive advantage in an ever-changing environment. Our body of work, our client partnerships is the bedrock for our trajectory and validates that we are on the right path,” dentsu Media South Asia chief executive officer Divya Karani said.
Besides this, the agency has been declared ‘Agency-of-the-Year’ by three separate industry forums this year and has also been recognised among the ‘Top 100 Fastest-Growing Agencies’ globally by Adweek.
Speaking on the achievement, dentsu X India CEO Roopam Garg added, “This is a huge affirmation of our ‘Experience beyond Exposure’ offer powered by data and analytics. This drives outcomes for brands v/s only output or media efficiencies. The fact that a growing number of marketers see the value dentsu X provides in this rapidly changing and challenging business, is a tremendous endorsement of our design.”
RECMA publishes a wide range of media agency notation reports on a global scale with the aim to provide strategic intelligence reference tools to help global advertisers in their decision-making and agency sourcing.
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.
