MAM
LIC still king, but private players gaining momentum
MUMBAI: With the insurance sector witnessing a boom, owing to private insurance players going all out with their to big-bang advertising to build awareness and recall, LIC although continues to dominate the insurance market in terms of ‘recall’ and market share the private insurance players continue their perusal in making inroads into the consumer mindspace – according to the Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) Insurance Tracker.
Insurance companies at large are resorting to different creative strategies with ICICI Prudential using a mix of Corporate (Suraksha Zindagi Ke Har Kadam Par’) and Product (Chintamani – no Chinta only Money) advertising; SBI Life banking on ‘corporate’ (‘Woh Bacchpan Ke Din Lauta Do’) advertising, while some like Dabur Aviva focussing more on ‘product’ advertising.
Says TNS India senior vice president, Shobha Subramanian, “For private insurance players, key task is to build awareness, trust and positive disposition – for behavior to be impacted in the marketplace.”
As a consequence of heightened media activity, private players are gaining in acceptance, and this has meant that LIC is starting to lose ‘share-of-mind’.
The insurance tracker from the market research outfit, TNS India , is the only continuous brand health monitoring study for the insurance sector. Conducted in the seven cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad, the study aims to monitor the impact of marketing initiatives unleashed by marketers in the insurance arena, competitive activity and the evolving needs of investor groups.
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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.
