AD Agencies
Keshav Naidu and Kahini Panjabi launch new ad agency
MUMBAI: Advertising professionals Keshav Naidu and Kahini Panjabi have come together to launch a new agency called Naidu & Panjabi. The agency, which is headquartered in Mumbai, has clients ranging from personal care to hospitality and e-commerce.
Naidu and Panjabi believe that they can cultivate brands for growth by way of quality human experiences. Naidu was voted by Clio as one of the Top 12 Global Creative Directors under 30, whereas Panjabi is a second generation art director, who grew up literally in the creative department at Lintas.
Within a few days of inception, the agency bagged the account for the recently funded, beauty and wellness booking app Ziffi. A first outing for the agency, the Ziffi ad film also marks the directorial debut of Kunaal Roy Kapur.
Talking about their first client and their agency, Naidu said, “Naidu & Panjabi was born out of a dire need to harness our creative restlessness. Traditional advertising and creativity needs to be challenged as the world gets smaller by the day. With Naidu & Panjabi, we hope to create the perfect conditions for path-breaking, creative collaborations. Ziffi is the kind of new digital service that we don’t realize we need, until we use it. Once you’re hooked, you wonder how you ever managed without it. The real challenge however, is to get people to try something like this. How do you get people to try something they don’t consciously need?”
Describing how they didn’t want to make something that would look like an ad, Panjabi added, “We didn’t set out to make an ad film. We wanted to make a funny video that young, urban India would enjoy as entertainment. And somewhere along the way we bumped into Kunaal Roy Kapur, who totally gets this demographic.”
Kapur said, “The script and treatment, which Naidu & Panjabi came up with was fantastic. I couldn’t have asked for a better video to debut with as a commercial director. The experience was enriching and I do hope to put our heads together for a lot more work!”
Ziffi.com CEO Shantanu Jha added, “Naidu & Panjabi are an amazing team to work with. Their understanding of the product and audience is spot on. Their creativity and freshness in thought process is refreshing and often sets the campaign apart from the clutter. Loaded with experience, Naidu & Panjabi team goes the extra mile to get work done and deliver things. They are just the right partner you need for the fast paced delivery timelines. I am sure, Naidu & Panjabi are here to make a big dent and we wish them all the very best.”
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.
