MAM
Grey Group India gets Projit Sarkar on board to head its Kolkata Office
MUMBAI: Grey Group India has appointed Projit Sarkar as head of Kolkata operations.
Sarkar brings with him an experience of nearly 13 years in brand and marketing communications. His last stint was with Amrit Group of companies where he was heading the brand and marketing department. The other agencies he has worked with include Genesis, Mileage, Mudra, O&M and Madison BMB.
At Grey, Sarkar will report to the newly appointed chairman and managing director Sunil Lulla.
Lulla said, “Grey Group is delighted to welcome Projit back to lead the growing operations of eastern India from Kolkata. His familiarity with the market place, clients and consumers coupled with his experience in brand and marketing communications will add tremendous value and benefit both the agency and clients based in the market. We look forward to him enabling Grey Group to be even more famous and effective, in the east of India.”
Sarkar said, “Coming back to Grey Group is a homecoming. I see and believe that there is a lot of opportunity to create value for internal and external stakeholders through meaningful effective marketing communication. Grey Group is the place where it can be done from. ”
Projit has worked on various brands across categories like Telecom, Insurance, Banks, Retail, Cement, Tourism, FMCG, Footwear, Paints and Foods. His experience will enable the current roster of clients, which include West Bengal Tourism, Score Information Technologies, Tea Board of India, Mani Group, Philips Carbon Black and Haldiram’s, amongst others.
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.
