MAM
GroupM’s Shan Jain joins Publicis Media India
MUMBAI: Former GroupM executive Shan Jain has joined Publicis MediaIndia as the head of business transformation practice. Jain’s last stint was with GroupM, as Principal Partner, Client Leadership at Mindshare.
Jain comes with more than 24 years of rich and diverse experience across Media, Account Planning, Strategy and Account management and has worked with Mindshare, RK Swamy BBDO, The Media Edge, FCB Ulka, Lowe, McCann and Ogilvy. Some of the key clients she has led and contributed to are HUL Personal Care, HUL Foods and beverage, GSK, ITC, Maruti and Gillete. She is passionate about brands and consumer journeys and has to her credit multiple awards including Spikes and Festival of Media Asia and Festival of Media Global. While it is a national role, she will be based out of Gurgaon.
Publicis Media India CEO Anupriya Acharya said, “Business Transformation Practice of Publicis Media unlocks growth by re-engineering our client’s customer experience through a combination of talent and technology. Shan will be supported by Gautham Ram Pingali in this area who himself has a great experience around technology and its far-reaching impact on clients businesses. He also continues to lead the Content Practice in PM India.”
Jain said, “The excellent data, analytics and tech support that I can lean on within the group as well as the extended expertise for Publicis. Sapient puts us in a very advantageous position in the market to strike these conversations with clients.
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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.
