MAM
Kedar Shetye joins WPP Media as director – performance marketing
MUMBAI: WPP Media has appointed Kedar Shetye as director – performance marketing, marking a major milestone in his nine-year journey across India’s digital marketing landscape. Based in Mumbai, Shetye will lead performance strategies across platforms, align paid media execution with business growth objectives, and steer teams to deliver measurable ROI at scale. The move signals WPP Media’s focus on strengthening its performance marketing leadership.
“I’m thrilled to start this new chapter with WPP Media,” said Shetye. “Performance marketing is about blending analytics, experimentation, and creativity to drive real growth. I look forward to building campaigns that deliver tangible results while mentoring high-performing teams.”
Shetye brings a wealth of experience across leading agencies and brands, including The Brand Saloon, Performics, Croma, toothsi, Performics India, Ethinos Digital Marketing, and Logicserve Digital. Over the years, he has led end-to-end performance initiatives on Google, Meta, Programmatic, and LinkedIn, handled P&L ownership, mentored teams, and contributed to business growth through audits, multi-channel restructures, and successful new-business pitches.
He has managed annual media budgets exceeding ₹100 crore, driving full-funnel campaigns across sectors like retail, D2C, BFSI, apps, and technology, optimising ROAS and revenue outcomes at scale. His work spans campaign strategy, digital transformation, performance audits, conversion optimisation, media planning, and go-to-market initiatives.
A seasoned performance marketing professional, Shetye combines sharp analytics, channel planning, experimentation frameworks, and conversion-focused execution to solve growth challenges. His career has been defined by delivering measurable results, scaling teams, and turning data into actionable strategy—a perfect fit for WPP Media’s next phase of growth.
At WPP Media, he is expected to spearhead high-impact performance campaigns, mentor cross-functional teams, and further cement the agency’s reputation as a powerhouse in ROI-driven digital marketing.
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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.
