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GCPL’s Sunil Kataria is ISA’s new chairman
MUMBAI: The newly elected executive council of the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) has recently elected Godrej Consumer Products SAARC and India -business head Sunil Kataria as the chairman.
On his election, Kataria said, “Our focus would be to deliver the desired benefit to the advertisers and other stakeholders. I look forward to working with all and make this a credible, meaningful and business impacting ecosystem.”
Kataria joined GCPL in 2011 to oversee the sales and marketing organisation for the India and SAARC businesses. He has diverse work experience across FMCG and consumer services sectors in sales, marketing and business. He had a stint of 12 years at Marico Industries.
Other members of the Executive Council are as follows:
Atul Agrawal, SVP-Corporate Affairs, Group Corporate Communications, Tata Services
Anuradha Aggarwal, Chief Marketing Officer, Marico
Abraham Mathew Alapatt, President & Group Head-Marketing, Service Quality, Financial Services & Innovation, Thomas Cook (India)
Narendra Ambwani, Director, Agro Tech Foods
Ajoy H Chawla, Sr. VP, Chief Strategy Officer, Titan Company
Paulomi Dhawan, Advisor, Raymond
Sonali Dhawan, Brand Director, Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care
Chandru Kalro, Managing Director, TTK Prestige
Sandeep Kataria, Director – Commercial, Vodafone India
Sandeep Kaul, Divisional Chief Executive – India Tobacco Division, ITC
Sandeep Kohli, Executive Director – Personal Care, Hindustan Unilever
Beena Koshy, Executive VPr, Advertising, Digital & Branding, Bajaj Electrical
Bharat V Patel, Independent Director, Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company
Prashant Richard Peres, Director Marketing Chocolate, India, Mondelez India Foods
Ramakrishnan Ramamurthi, Vice-Chairman, Joint MD & Group CEO, Polycab Wires
Samardeep Sunil Subandh, Chief Marketing Officer, Flipkart
Amit Tiwari, Director, Philips India
Brahm Vasudeva, Chairman, Hawkins Cookers
ISA has advertiser members from across industries who contribute to approximately over two-thirds of the annual national non-governmental ad spends. ISA played a significant role in the formation of BARC and is closely partnering with it towards advertisers getting robust and credible data.
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.
