Karishma M. joins JioStar as manager, digital ad sales

MUMBAI: From selling luxury to selling ad space. Karishma M. has joined JioStar as manager, digital ad sales, bringing a sharp category mind and a numbers-first approach to one of India’s biggest media houses. Her LinkedIn profile lists the role as engagement manager at JioStar in Mumbai, starting in October 2026.

She arrives with plenty on the board. At Tata CLiQ Fashion, where she was category manager, luxury, from May 2024 to July 2026, she governed a premium portfolio of more than 100 international luxury brands, generating over Rs 15 crore in revenue a month. She handled a team and guided them through operations, target planning and forecasting, site visibility and brand interactions.

Her brief there was wide. She built category-level strategies and internal targets to accelerate brand sales and market share. She also built high-level rapport with brand representatives to secure participation in exclusive campaigns and sale events, and worked with the marketing, monetisation and site merchandising teams to improve brand visibility. She set up reporting frameworks to track daily top-line and bottom-line metrics and overall performance.

Before that, from December 2022 to May 2024, she was category and planning analyst at AJIO.com in Bengaluru. There she scaled the marketplace business model, which spans apparel, footwear, beauty and handbags, by 20 per cent while managing a total revenue portfolio of Rs 500 crore. She built sales plans for more than 4,000 brands, kept to Annual Operating Plan targets, and used site properties such as banners and push notifications to drive brand marketing and conversion. She also initiated revenue-boosting events, including stock clearances and curated look-books.

From September 2020 to December 2022 she was key account manager at Zomato in Pune, managing relationships with more than 300 restaurant owners. She used sales metrics to grow client accounts, planned events with event managers and artists to lift restaurants’ dining and online ordering business, and analysed consumer behaviour patterns, industry trends and competitor strategies. Her career began with an internship as market research analyst at Kantar in Pune from May to July 2019.

Karishma describes herself as a strategic category manager with a background in business analysis and more than six years in the e-commerce industry, with a proven record of developing and implementing business plans to meet revenue targets and drive growth. Announcing the move, she said she is excited about “new milestones, fresh energy, and collaborating with some of the best in the business”.

Three things stand out. First, the numbers. A portfolio of Rs 500 crore at AJIO.com and Rs 15 crore a month at Tata CLiQ Fashion shows she has handled large revenue lines with discipline. Ad sales is a game of targets and forecasts, and she has plenty of practice.

Second, the brand view. Years of working with brands, from more than 4,000 at AJIO.com to more than 100 luxury names at Tata CLiQ Fashion, mean she knows what advertisers want: visibility, conversion and a clear return. That client-side understanding is useful on the sell side of digital advertising.

Third, the range. She has worked on marketplaces, luxury fashion and restaurant partnerships, and has moved between roles in planning, analysis and account management. That mix of analytics and relationship building suits a job that sits between brands, platforms and data.