MAM
Leo Burnett India expands its senior creative team
MUMBAI: Close on the heels of the announcement of RajDeepak Das joining the Leo Burnett Group as chief creative officer comes new of Prajato Guha Thakurta and Sachin Kamble joining the agency.
The two will join in as associate executive creative directors. Thakurta and Kamble will be based at the head office in Mumbai and will work closely with RajDeepak.
Leo Burnett Group CEO Saurabh Varma said, “Leo Burnett continues to be a magnet for incredible creative talent. We want to build the momentum with the hire of Prajato and Sachin. They have an excellent track record and have proven their mettle by creating some outstanding integerated campaigns. We look forward to having them join a super charged Leo Burnett.”
Added Das, “With a special affinity for digital, design and technology, I am really happy to have the duo on board. It will be fun working together with them on integrated campaigns across Leo Burnett India’s diverse portfolio of brands.”
“Times are changing and getting even more demanding and dynamic by the day. Leo Burnett is recognized for the wonderful integrated campaigns they’ve created for their clients worldwide. I am very keen and excited to be a part of this great agency and working on some of the iconic brands in their portfolio,” said Thakurta
“It is an exciting and opportune time to be at Leo Burnett India. I am thoroughly excited to be a part of the trajectory path of Burnett 2.0 as drawn by Saurabh and visualised and articulated by RajDeepak in our interactions. It would be amazing to see what new we can do together,” mentioned Kamble.
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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.
