AD Agencies
Mallus of merit Maitri’s creative storm puts Kerala on the winners’ map
MUMBAI: They came, they played, they cleaned house armed with satire, nostalgia, and a killer instinct for viral storytelling. In a blockbuster awards season, Kerala’s very own Maitri is rewriting the rules of regional creativity, bagging a shower of accolades at the Kyoorius Creative Awards and the Abbys 2025. The independent agency, headquartered far from the metros that usually dominate India’s creative scene, is now firmly in the national spotlight.
“We’ve always believed that there’s plenty of creativity in Kerala,” said Maitri managing director Raju Menon. “These wins affirm that you don’t have to leave home for the world to see your work.”
And see it, they did. Maitri’s headline-grabbing campaign for Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), a tongue-in-cheek scam ad that exposed scam ads snagged three Kyoorius metals in Topical Film, Social Media Engagement, and Film Craft (Produced Under Rs 10 Lakh). The same campaign added two Silver Abbys to its trophy shelf in Digital – online only video (30s to 60s) and Digital Craft – creative use of video.
The kicker? It competed against high-budget campaigns from national giants and still stood out with originality and wit.
Also racking up wins was Sandhesham, a Malayalee-nostalgia-laced BGMI film that struck gold in Kerala and went viral worldwide despite being in a language spoken by just 0.4 per cent of the global population. The result: two Blue Elephants at Kyoorius in Regional Film and Regional Digital and Social Media.
On the Valentine’s Day front, Maitri flipped the script with Villantine’s Day, a villain-themed campaign for Asianet that blended nostalgia with pop-culture quirk. It earned a Blue Elephant and a lot of love from Malayalam-speaking social media.
“Whether it was the satire in Thokkummoottil, the nostalgia of Sandhesham, or the humorous twist of Villantine’s Day, we tried to make each idea feel like it was born here but built to travel,” said Maitri Group creative director Francis Thomas.
“The question we always ask ourselves is this something I’d send my friends?” added Maitri Group creative director Vincent Vadakkan.
With a Baby Elephant and multiple shortlists, including under Young Maverick, Maitri’s momentum isn’t just a flash in the creative pan, it’s a marker of what’s to come.
As Maitri director of digital & overseas business Sumit Raj summed up, “The best work comes from a place of mutual trust and respect, and we’re lucky we have that with our clients.”
Maitri’s rise is not just a win for one agency, it’s a moment for the South, signalling that India’s creative future may well have a coconut tree in the frame and a cheeky, sharp script behind the camera.
Kerala’s no longer just watching from the sidelines. It’s centre stage script in hand, mic turned up, and trophies in tow.
AD Agencies
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.
