MAM
Huawei global ropes in Lionel Messi as brand ambassador
MUMBAI Huawei ICT and telecommunication solutions company Huawei, today announced Lionel Messi as its latest global brand ambassador. The Chinese multinational says that the partnership with Lionel Messi showcases the brand’s alignment with people and brands that demonstrate, and strive towards its shared value of connecting greatness.
“Lionel Messi will help our brand to encourage people to focus, persevere and breakthrough; to connect with greatness, especially in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, where Huawei puts great devotions. We both honour the path we walked to what we have achieved, and with each new challenge we renew our commitment to find the path to success.” said Huawei Consumer BG handset business president Kevin Ho.
“We are happy to announce our collaboration with an extraordinary individual who inspires people all over the world to pursue their dreams, to face challenges to become better with each day. Just like our brand which strives for excellence and innovates to better itself to reach newer heights of greatness, Messi is the epitome of perseverance, excellence and commitment.” said Huawei India consumer business group president Allen Wang.
Messi said, “You have to fight to reach your dream. You have to sacrifice and go all in, always looking forward to achieving greatness. The day you think there are no improvements to be made, you have to keep working for reaching other achievements.”
Huawei believes that sports are a great way in which people enrich their lives and that is why our commitment towards sports in general, is so strong. In the India market Huawei completed 16 successful years and has associated with cricket, a sport which resonates the Huawei brand value, by sponsoring RCB in the Indian Premier League. “Besides cricket, football is another game which has a lot of followers in India and we are excited to be associated with the World’s top football athlete,” added Wang.
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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.
