MAM
Kwan acquires stake in PR agency Eye D
MUMBAI: Kwan, India‘s entertainment and marketing company, has acquired controlling interest in PR agency Eye D Communications for an undisclosed amount.
Eye D and Kwan already share a number of clients in common on the PR and commercial front and this acquisition has been a natural progression of a working relationship.
Kwan MD Anirban Das Blah says, “We were looking at investing in a PR agency to provide complete communications solutions to our clients. My only worry was the glaring difficulty that communication companies face when it comes to building and communicating their clients as brands.”
Blah believes Eye D Communications is an agency that operates from a ‘strategic communication’ perspective and not just from a media relations point of view.
“We plan to help Eye D accelerate their growth by virtue of our relationships and broaden their offering within the entertainment, fashion, luxury and lifestyle space. Eye D will continue to operate under the same brand name in the industry so as to maintain its individuality even beyond the realm of Kwan”, Blah says.
Adds Eye D Communications head Divya Tejuja, “Having worked very closely with Kwan on the numerous clients that we share, we have been able to rapidly scale up operations in sectors such as films, fashion, lifestyle and luxury brands. The association will give us access to a much larger talent pool and put us on the fast track to effective brand building and image management in the entertainment, luxury and lifestyle space.”
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.
