MAM
JW Marriott Pune appoints Abhirath Sah as director of sales & marketing
MUMBAI: JW Marriott Pune, one of the most-reputed/luxurious hotels in the city, has further added to its dedicated and experienced team with the appointment of Abhirath Sah as the new Director of Sales & Marketing. In his new role, Abhirath will be responsible for the overall functioning and growth of market share for the hotel, and will spearhead a team of highly skilled professionals while developing sales & revenue strategies for segment-wise growth.
With a vast experience and a deep understanding of the hospitality sector, Abhirath joins the hotel from The Westin Hyderabad Mindspace, where in his capacity as Director of Sales & Marketing, he was in charge of driving the core sales and marketing strategies. Abhirath brings to the table his unmatched expertise in hospitality operations and management, after a long-spanning career in the industry, with prominent hospitality brands such as Sheraton, Leela Palace – Hotels & Resorts and Trident among others.
Abhirath holds a degree from Institute of Hotel Management and Catering Technology & Applied Nutrition, Bangalore and began his career with Carlson Hospitality Marketing India Pvt. Ltd. He was awarded with the “Innovative Achievement of the Year 2009” at the IHHR National Sales Conference. An avid traveler and a keen golf enthusiast, Abhirath is equally passionate about his work and is aligned with JW Marriott Pune’s commitment towards enriching guest experience through thoughtfully-crafted services.
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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.
