MAM
Leo Burnett India elevates Sainath Saraban to NCD
MUMBAI: Leo Burnett Group India CCO Rajdeepak Das today announced the elevation of Sainath Saraban as the national creative director (NCD). As part of his new role, Sai (as he is fondly known), will oversee and take care of the Chennai market as well as key national clients. He will continue to be based in Delhi as he assumes this new responsibility.
Leo Burnett Group CEO Surabh Varma said, “Sai is one of the best creative talents in The Leo Group today. His thorough and in-depth understanding of the target audience coupled with popular culture comes through clearly in the great work that he creates for our clients. I look forward to seeing him make magic in the Chennai market and on our key national clients.”
Leo Burnett CCO Rajdeepak Das added, “Sai is definitely one of the most promising talents of Leo Burnett India and undoubtedly one of the good human beings I have come across. We want the greatness to spread to one more office. Cheers to Sai.”
On his new role Sai said, “Over the last nine years, I have grown with the agency and the agency has grown with me. Now it’s time to take my role to the next level. I see challenges and opportunities alike and along with Saurabh and Raj, I look forward to what lies ahead. The ‘Change Everything’ philosophy is something we all believe in and it holds true for the kind of work we create and how we create it.”
Sai, who joined Leo Burnett in 2005, began his career with JWT Delhi, where he worked for five years on brands like Boost, Pizza Hut, Hero Cycles and CNBC. This was followed by a brief stint at McCann Erickson after which he joined JWT Bangalore where he worked on Kingfisher, Red Label Tea, McDowell’s and was a part of the team that won Levi’s and Nike. At Leo Burnett, Delhi, some of the memorable work that Sai has created are on brands such as Thumbs Up, Maaza, Minute Maid, Perfetti, Samsung to name a few.
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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.
