MAM
Himanka Das joins Carat Media as head of west operations
MUMBAI: Carat India has appointed Himanka Das as senior vice president west. He will report to Carat India managing director Kartik Iyer.
Das has an experience of eight years with Lintas Media Group as vice president working across diverse geographies.
Iyer commented, “I have had the opportunity of working with Himanka in the past when he has proven himself to be a great team leader and we are delighted to have him with us. This, combined with his strong background in strategic planning will be a great asset to Carat Media in India and he will definitely play a pivotal role in this growth phase of Carat.”
Das said, “I look forward to exciting days at Carat, which is a great brand for any media professional to be associated with, given that it has diversified media offerings to serve the marketer’s business challenges. I look forward to working with Kartik and the team in Mumbai in rapidly growing the business in the region.”
Himanka is a physics graduate and holds a Masters Degree in Mass Communication Science and has spent 15 years in media, working on brands like Jyothy Laboratories, Union Bank of India, Samsonite Group, Bharat Petroleum, Hamdard, Maruti Udyog Ltd. Bajaj Auto, Tata Mutual Fund, DSP Black Rock Asset Management, Sa Re Ga Ma, Britannia, Coca-Cola India, Unilever, P&G, Agrotech Foods, Birla White and National Dairy Development Board.
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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.
