MAM
Maxus India brings on board Anand Chakravarthy as West Head
MUMBAI: Maxus today announced the appointment of Anand Chakravarthy as West Head. Anand will report into Kartik Sharma, Managing Director, Maxus South Asia, will be leading the region from the Mumbai office. Some of the clients under his supervision are Vodafone, L’Oreal, Tata Sky, Colors and Fiat Motors.
Commenting on Anand’s appointment, Kartik Sharma, MD, Maxus South Asia said, “We are excited to have a senior leader from the industry in the Maxus team. Anand comes with a rich and varied experience across categories and brands, not to mention his immense knowledge of working with one of the country’s largest media and entertainment brands. We are confident he will push the PACE agenda for Maxus and help our team deliver the 10/10 vision for our clients.”
Speaking on his appointment, Anand Chakravarthy, West Head, Maxus said, “As a marketing and broadcast media professional, I have watched Maxus emerge as a thought leader in a dramatically changing media environment. The opportunity to be part of this winning team and help create value for an enviable portfolio of clients is an exceptionally exciting opportunity I look forward to.”
Prior to joining Maxus he was the Executive Vice President Marketing at Reliance Broadcast Network Ltd & Business Head for the Big CBS TV Network. He has been part of the Executive Committee at Reliance Broadcast Network since its inception in 2006. Anand was instrumental in building the organization, from a start up to a multi-media entity today with play across Radio, Live Entertainment and Television.
Prior to joining RBNL, Anand was Associate Vice President, Strategic Planning at LOWE, where he crafted communication & brand strategies for several Unilever brands like Surf Excel, Wheel, Vim, Domex, as well as financial brands like HSBC, ICICI Bank, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, IL&FS and Tata Mutual Fund. Anand started his career with Research International, a part of WPP’s KANTAR Group, specializing in quantitative & qualitative research. At Research International he worked on multiple categories like foods, household & personal care products, consumer durables & automobiles.
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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.
