MAM
Lenovo India appoints Shailendra Katyal as its marketing head
MUMBAI: Lenovo India has appointed Shailendra Katyal as the its marketing head.
Based out of Lenovo‘s Bangalore head office in Bangalore, Katyal will be responsible for handling the Lenovo master-brand and leading marketing for the three business segments it operates in like consumer, relational and SMB.
Katyal‘s primary role in Lenovo will be to aggressively grow Lenovo‘s brand preference in the consumer and SOHO segments, according to an official statement.
Says Lenovo India managing director Amar Babu, “We are pleased to appoint Shailendra, a versatile marketing professional, who has a proven track record in leading marketing campaigns of marquee consumer brands. We continue to strengthen the management on the back of our strong success in the Indian market and want to continue the momentum on our double digit market share.”
Katyal comes with 12 years of industry experience, having worked in varied roles in sales and marketing in the FMCG space.
Avers Katyal “It is a great opportunity for me to be working with a global force like Lenovo. It is one of the leading forces in the technology space today and leads with a strong core of product innovation. It is also a truly multicultural organization with high emphasis on entrepreneurial behavior, which is what I really thrive in. It‘s an honor to be associated with the Lenovo brand and iconic sub-brands like the ThinkPad.”
Prior to joining Lenovo India, Katyal was category head at Marico for nearly a decade.
Besides playing a significant role in charting out the hair care strategy for Marico, he had successful stints in managing large brand franchises like Parachute and Saffola, integrating acquired brands like Nihar Naturals and handled equities like Shanti and Hair & Care.
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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.
