MAM
Joy Mohanty joins Dentsu Creative India as chief creative officer
Mumbai: Dentsu Creative India has announced the appointment of Joy Mohanty as its chief creative officer. He will report to the company’s group chief creative officer, Ajay Gahlaut.
Joy will be instrumental in accelerating Dentsu Creative India’s growth trajectory in the North region. He will align with the agency’s ambition and work closely with the creative teams to build solutions that have the power to transform brands and businesses through the lens of modern creativity.
In a career spanning over three decades, Joy’s professional journey has been deeply rooted in Indian culture. He has worked on a host of brands such as Maruti Suzuki, Google, Nestle, Absolut, Thums Up, Makemytrip.com, Housing.com, HP, to name a few. In his previous roles, he held creative leadership positions in agencies like Publicis Capital and Lowe Lintas. Prior to joining Dentsu, he led Goldilocks, an agency from the Usha International Group.
Some of the notable campaigns Joy has worked on include: Maruti Suzuki’s “Kitna Deti Hai,” Absolut’s “Colourless,” Google Search & Google Maps’s “Paanch Minute ko Paanch Minute Banate Hain,” Google Maps 2-wheeler’s “Paaon Zameen Se Door Rahenge,” Housing.com’s “Yahan Search Khatam Karo” and Google Railwire’s “#StoriesFromTheStation.” He was also a part of the “Money Made Simple” campaign for Google Pay and Google Assistant’s India launch.
Commenting on Joy’s appointment, Ajay Gahlaut said, “Dentsu Creative is transforming into a powerhouse of creativity. We are rapidly building capabilities to stay ahead of the curve in a dynamically evolving industry. However, the tallest structures are built on strong foundations. Joy’s appointment is, thus, vital to our plan for the times ahead. He is a veteran who has worked on some of the most groundbreaking campaigns. I am certain that his experience will bring solidity and wisdom to the fresh, bubbling cauldron of creativity at Dentsu.”
Joy Mohanty added, “I am excited to join forces with Ajay and Amit and be part of the superb talent hub they have turned Dentsu Creative into. An enviable list of clients makes this a big opportunity. I look forward to adding to the energy and doing some great work.”
It may be recalled that Dentsu Creative India was declared the ‘Agency of The Year’ at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2022—a first-ever for India. It was a historic hat-trick, with the agency also lifting a Titanium for its “Unfiltered History Tour (UHT)” campaign, in addition to bagging three Grand Prix—another first, two Gold Lions and three Silver Lions—making UHT the most awarded work not only from India but globally.
AD Agencies
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.
