MAM
Leo Burnett India launches ‘Speakeasy with Dheeraj Sinha’ Season 3
Mumbai: Leo Burnett India has announced Season 3 of its thought leadership initiative ‘Speakeasy with Dheeraj Sinha’. The podcast will be a weekly series focusing on the theme of “leadership businesses brands in the new age.”
Evolving from a brand-building forum to a platform presenting holistic business outlook, ‘Speakeasy with Dheeraj Sinha – Season 3’ promises intuitive and engaging conversations, with 10 new captains who have taken the driver’s seat to lead businesses.
As a part of this show, Leo Burnett- South Asia CEO & BBH India’s chairman Dheeraj Sinha will be in conversation with business and brand leaders who share their experiences, insights and journey in scaling up brands & businesses. An enlightening chat for listeners, full of insights, creative ideas, brand case studies, and future trends.
Joining Dheeraj in season 3 will be speakers who helm some of the most reputed brands including The Man Company co-founder and managing director Hitesh Dhingra, Lumikai Fund general partner Salone Sehgal, Loco founder Anirudh Pandita, Bajaj Auto Ltd head of marketing Narayan Sundararaman, Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters co-founder and CEO Matt Chitharanjan to name a few.
The previous two successful seasons saw some of the distinguished guests from every walk of life with diverse portfolios, coming onboard to decode valuable market insights from the brand perspective. Some of the great leaders from previous seasons were from Google, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, Kimberly Clark, Daily Hunt & Josh; Hero Vired, India Quotient and many more. The success of the previous season has crossed 1.2 million + listeners and fans.
Speaking about season 3 podcast, Sinha said, “We are thrilled to launch Season 3 of our podcast. This podcast started as an idea to deep-dive into the processes of brand building in the new age, understand the evolution of cultural trends & the start-up landscape. As with the previous seasons, the upcoming episodes are packed with thought-provoking insights in the sphere of leadership, businesses, and brands. This has been an immensely gratifying journey and I want to thank both my listeners and guests for joining in this initiative.”
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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.
