MAM
Mandiant taps Balaji Rao as country manager to lead India operations
Mumbai: Mandiant Inc, a global player in dynamic cyber defense and response, on Monday announced the appointment of Balaji Rao as its new country manager for India and SAARC markets. In this role, Rao will be responsible for revenue generation, strategic business development and operations at the company.
An industry veteran with over 25 years of experience working with large MNCs and enterprises in leadership roles, Rao will be spearheading the team to help organisations in India gain their cyber security advantage with Mandiant’s innovative portfolio of solutions and services, said the company in a statement.
“No organisation in the world is immune to breaches. We are committed to scaling our business in India by empowering our Indian customers and partners to take decisive action, minimise risk, regardless of their size or security controls,” stated Mandiant Asia Pacific and Japan president Eric Hoh. “With Balaji joining our dynamic team, I am confident that we will sharpen our focus to enable more organisations to deploy our controls-agnostics security solutions and services while expanding our growing presence in the Indian subcontinent.”
Rao brings with him deep experience in building successful teams and a demonstrated track record of bringing business back to profitability and enabling the adoption of new technologies by customers and partners.
“There is no better time than now for organisations in India to take a proactive stance to defend against cyberattacks in this changing threat landscape,” said Balaji Rao on his new role. “Powered by unmatched intelligence and response expertise, Mandiant Advantage SaaS platform provides organisations with the tools they need to build an effective cyber security program and I look forward to helping them gain their cyber security advantage with Mandiant.”
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.
