MAM
Kyoorius announces second edition of Kyoorius Design Awards
MUMBAI: In its second year, Kyoorius in association with D&AD, will recognise work through Kyoorius Design Awards.
The awards night promises to be a celebration of Indian design across a breadth of disciplines such as branding & identity, communication design, book design, editorial design, design for space, packaging and writing for design. In addition to these there are individual categories for design crafts such as illustration and typography, while the design for good category awards work that promotes social awareness.
Jury sessions comprised some of the best creative minds from across the world, who were flown down to Pune to judge the entries. The diverse six-member jury comprised Johnson banks creative director Foreman Michael Johnson, Anonymous creative director Felix Ng– creative director, FITCH creative director Brandon McCormick , Alok Nanda & Company founder & CEO Alok Nanda, Lopez Design CEO & principal designer Anthony Lopez and Trapeze co-founder Ram Sinam .
Out of the 680 entries submitted, a total of 72 in-book winners have been announced who will go on to be nominated for Blue or Black Elephants. In-book winners include work by leading design studios and consultancies, including Alok Nanda & Company, Umbrella Design, Redlion, Curry Nation, Chlorophyll Brand and Communications Consultancy, Kulture Shop, Bombay Duck Designs, Locopopo, Trapeze, Lotus as well as agencies such as Ogilvy & Mather, Publicis India and Grey Worldwide.
Kyoorius founder CEO Rajesh Kejriwal commented, “We are trying to fuel a design movement in India through our continued efforts to expand the platform. The response for the Kyoorius Design Awards has doubled since last year and continues to grow thanks to the support and participation of the entire design fraternity. Jury members responded to work that had an added cultural nuance that made them distinctly Indian. They were especially impressed with the quality of writing in the work, which is one of our hidden strengths.”
The winners will be announced at an awards party on 13 September at Grand Hyatt in Goa.
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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.
