MAM
Kantar IMRB appoints Paru Minocha as head of qualitative business
MUMBAI: Kantar IMRB, a leading market research company, announced the appointment of Paru Minocha as the head of qualitative business Unit. She has taken over from Rohini Abraham. Paru joined Kantar IMRB in Sept 2015 and is based in Mumbai. She will play a key role in leading the company’s go to market services & drive the growth of the Qualitative business pan India.
Armed with over 20 years of experience in market research, Paru started her career as a qualitative researcher in MARG and went on to set up & head Synovate in Delhi. Having done this successfully, she moved to Mumbai to head Synovate pan India and subsequently, as head of innovation in IPSOS.
Paru can boast of a well-rounded experience in Market Research, a mix of both Qualitative & Quantitative research. She has expertise in several sectors including Social, FMCG, Tobacco and Automotive.
Kantar Insights CEO – South Asia Preeti Reddy said, ‘’Paru’s experience in both Qualitative and Quantitative will prove to be an asset. She brings in a deep understanding of research, complex business environments and client needs. Paru’s cross sector experience will certainly aid IMRB Qualitative to rise to greater heights under her stewardship”.
Paru Minocha said, “I’m thrilled to be leading this role when the core Qualitative research is being redefined. I look forward to leveraging technology, social media data and marrying them with the primary survey data. This new approach is also reflected in how as a company we are organized and the investments that we are making in technology and digital. As Kantar IMRB, we have unique access to social data, proprietary syndicated data as well as strong partnerships with third party data owners. I strongly believe that qualitative research would form an integral part in decoding and making sense of the big data
Paru has done B Com Honors from SRCC and holds MBA degree in Marketing and Finance from Xavier’s Institute of Management.
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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.
