MAM
Isobar India hires Praveen Raj as creative director – West & South
MUMBAI: Dentsu Aegis Network’s full-service digital agency Isobar India has roped in Praveen Raj as creative director – West & South.
As part his new mandate, Raj will be responsible for Isobar’s creative teams in Mumbai and Bangalore.
In his new role, Raj will report to Isobar group creative director Anish Varghese and will also be part of the Isobar creative council, which will include creative Varghese and Isobar India director – North Anadi Sah. The council will lead Isobar’s creative vision into 2016 and beyond.
Isobar India managing director Shamsuddin Jasani said, “The creative wing of Isobar is the heart and soul of the agency and I am very happy that Praveen has joined us to strengthen an already strong creative team. I believe that the creative council will be able to take our work above and beyond global standards.”
Speaking about his new role, Raj said, “Isobar has a very young and enthusiastic team and a roster of great brands to work with; not to forget the opportunities for collaboration with the extensive Dentsu Aegis Network agencies. So I’m looking forward to working closely with the team to build some serious creative chops and do outstanding work for our clients.”
Varghese added, “Praveen is a seasoned professional. Besides his ideation and detailing expertise, he is a true blue marketer. He has hands-on experience in blending art with technology. And his stint with start-ups and Ogilvy will just be the elixir to boost our creative squad.”
Prior to this, Raj was creative lead at AgencyDigi and was responsible for winning clients such as Axis Mutual Funds, HDFC Securities, and Enrich Salons & Academy. He has spent more than 13 years in advertising with a primary focus on digital media. Before joining AgencyDigi, he spent four years with OgilvyOne Worldwide fronting businesses for several top brands like Vodafone, Diageo, Emirates and Disney.
During his three-year stint with Hungry & Foolish Intellectual Properties, Raj was involved in creating advertising for Kamasutra and Lenovo apart from crafting several other independent creative products.
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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.
