MAM
Frido gets a grip on hockey comfort with Soorma Club partnership
MUMBAI: High-speed tackles, tight turnarounds and barely any recovery time elite hockey is as much about endurance as it is about skill. As the Hockey India League gears up for its 2025–26 season, comfort and recovery have found a new place on the team sheet.
Frido, India’s direct-to-consumer ergonomics and comfort solutions brand, has been named the official comfort partner for the JSW Sports-owned Soorma Hockey Club, covering both its men’s and women’s teams. The women’s league begins on 28 December 2025, followed by the men’s competition from 3 January 2026.
The partnership reflects a growing recognition that sustained performance across compressed league schedules depends not just on training intensity, but on recovery, injury prevention and everyday physical readiness. Hockey’s demands repeated sprints, abrupt changes in direction and constant physical contact leave little margin for error when it comes to player wellbeing.
As part of the association, Frido will equip Soorma Hockey Club’s squads with its range of comfort and orthotic solutions, designed to support athletes through match play, training sessions and recovery routines. Importantly, the same level of performance and recovery support will be extended across both the men’s and women’s teams, underlining the brand’s focus on equal access to science-led athlete care.
“At Frido, we believe elite performance deserves the right comfort and recovery support,” said Frido co-founder and CEO Ganesh Sonawane. “Partnering with Soorma Hockey Club allows us to extend this support equally to both men’s and women’s teams, reinforcing our commitment to empowering women in sport through meaningful, performance-led solutions.”
From the team’s perspective, the fit is a practical one. “Our players operate in an environment where physical readiness and recovery are non-negotiable,” said JSW Sports chief commercial officer Karan Yadav. “Frido’s understanding of ergonomics and athlete support aligns well with our approach to high-performance sport.”
The collaboration adds to Frido’s growing footprint in the sports ecosystem, as the brand looks to translate its athlete-focused learnings into everyday comfort solutions. For Soorma Hockey Club, it signals a season where marginal gains often decided off the pitch could make the difference when the whistle blows.
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.
