AD Agencies
Gozoop wins digital mandate for Villain Lifestyle
MUMBAI: Digital-first integrated marketing company Gozoop has successfully won the digital duties for Villain Lifestyle, a men’s fashion brand. Gozoop has taken over the reins of social media management for the brand, along with aspects of creative communication and influencer outreach. The company will craft a social media strategy to strengthen brand recall and build a strong social media community.
Villain is a men’s fashion and lifestyle brand that celebrates the antagonist’s story through products that are trend-making, masculine and strong. The brand is founded by ex-bad boys Beardo, Ashutosh Valani & Priyank Shah, in brand partnership with KGF-famed Rocking Star Yash. The trio came together to introduce the brand with a vision of making it a cool brand for the youth, exclusively for men. Villain aims to make style statements more accessible and affordable for the youth with a wide range of products like fragrances, hoodies, t-shirts and so on. It is perfect for all men who believe in styling and keeping the vibe of their style alive, the brand said.
Gozoop CEO & co-founder Ahmed Aftab Naqvi said, “It was a privilege to work alongside Ashutosh and team while helping build and scale Beardo – from its early stages into a category leader. We are honoured and humbled to be chosen once again as partners, this time for Villain. We look forward to leveraging our experience, expertise and team chemistry to #BreakTheBox for the brand”
Villain Lifestyle co-founder & director Ashutosh Valani said, “With Gozoop, we are looking forward to creating a legacy for Villain that’s bigger than ever. Having worked with them in the past, we know the kind of unique solutions they bring to the table and are sure that this partnership will be mutually exciting. We trust them to do their best work for the brand and are ready to launch some kickass campaigns with them!”
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.
