MAM
Marico Bangladesh acquires Aromatic soap brand
MUMBAI: Marico Bangladesh Ltd (MBL), the Bangladesh-based wholly owned subsidiary of Marico LTD, has acquired the toilet soap brand “Aromatic” from Aromatic Cosmetics LTD (ACL).
ACL is a Bangladeshi personal care product company. The financial terms were not disclosed.
The transaction included the signing of a suitable non-compete agreement between MBL and ACL as well as the purchase of certain equipment and intellectual property rights (IPR).
Aromatic has an aggregate turnover of about Taka 300 million in Bangladesh with a market share of around five per cent. Aromatic’s brand equity owes its strength to the quality of the soap and its positioning based on the “halal” concept, which has a strong recall amongst consumers.
Earlier this year, MBL had acquired another soap brand, Camelia to signal its entry into the toilet soaps market in Bangladesh. The acquisition of Aromatic will now enable MBL to strengthen its presence in the soaps category that is estimated to be about Taka 6,000 million.
Marico currently enjoys market leadership in the coconut oil category in Bangladesh through its brand Parachute. A strong distribution network that reaches about 290,000 outlets supports this.
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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.
