MAM
Golden words, golden futures as KEF bets big on real stories of change
MUMBAI: What do golden tickets and scholarships have in common? For hundreds of bright young minds, it’s the chance of a lifetime and Kotak Education Foundation (KEF) is spotlighting that connection with heart and purpose. Celebrating MSME Day 2025, KEF has rolled out a compelling campaign titled “Future Ka Golden Ticket” to raise awareness about its flagship Kotak Junior Scholarship.
Featuring real-life beneficiaries, the integrated campaign draws from actual stories of Mumbai’s promising students whose lives have been transformed through KEF’s support. From bus shelters and cab panels to guerrilla tricycle activations in underserved areas, the visuals and the message go straight to the heart.
But KEF isn’t just offering financial aid. It’s going the extra mile with what it calls “beyond scholarship” initiatives mentorship, academic assistance, and life-skills training designed to ensure holistic development. And the campaign, by putting real faces to these efforts, doubles down on trust and relatability.
“We’ve seen how ambition alone isn’t enough. What changes lives is access and zidd,” said a KEF spokesperson, echoing the foundation’s “Inch Wide, Mile Deep” philosophy that underpins every intervention across Maharashtra and Gujarat.
With three core verticals, school interventions, equitable scholarships, and vocational training, KEF’s initiatives have touched thousands. From building teacher capacity and improving English fluency in middle schools to supporting model schools at the district level, the impact is both broad and deep.
In numbers, KEF’s scholarship portfolio includes:
. Kotak Junior Scholarship for students in Mumbai’s low-income schools pursuing Class 11 & 12.
. Kotak Kanya Scholarship (launched in 2021) for meritorious girls nationwide in higher education.
. Project Unnati, which coaches unemployed youth in IT, spoken English, and life skills, guaranteeing placements to help them step into the workforce confidently.
With this new campaign, KEF is looking not just to inspire, but to scale with an eye on systemic reform. The focus is shifting from school-level impact to district and state-level education transformation. The next frontier? Impact at Scale.
As the CSR arm of Kotak Mahindra Group, Kotak Karma’s efforts through KEF are rooted in the belief that education is the greatest equaliser and in this campaign, every story told is another step toward levelling the playing field.
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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.
