MAM
Hotstar’s Gaurav Shahlot joins Khatabook as head of product
Mumbai: Fintech start-up Khatabook has announced the appointment of Gaurav Shahlot as head of product. He will also be a part of the core leadership team at Khatabook.
With over 10 million monthly active merchant users on its platforms, Khatabook plans to continue to drive growth by building a seamless product experience under Shahlot’s product leadership, said the platform in a statement
In his new role, he will be responsible for leading the product strategy and development along with team building and setting systems and processes for the product team to operate at scale. His key focus area would be to scale the products aligned to ongoing and new business initiatives of the company.
“Over the last three years, we have built a product with mass acceptance based on first principles. With increasing use cases on Khatabook, we needed a leader who has the experience of solving product problems at scale in a high-growth environment,” said Khatabook CEO and co-founder Ravish Naresh. “Gaurav has extensive experience with scaling and running products at scale. With his experience, leadership skills and passion for Khatabook’s mission, Gaurav is a natural fit to lead the product at Khatabook.”
A seasoned leader in product management, Shahlot brings expertise in identifying customer pain points and predicting future market needs to build innovative products. Before joining Khatabook, he was associated with Hotstar where he headed product management for over five years.
Before Hotstar, he worked with Myntra, leading mobile products. Shahlot co-founded Musicfellas, a music discovery platform to help users listen, share and support independent music all over the world, which was later acquired by Times Internet. An alumnus of Birla Institute of Technology and Science, he has done BE, computer science.
“I strongly believe in Khatabok’s mission to enable MSMEs in India with the power of technology,” said Gaurav Shahlot. “Nothing gives me more joy than building and scaling products, so I am incredibly thrilled to be part of Khatabook’s journey as it continues to transform small businesses in India, impacting the lives of millions.”
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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.
