MAM
McDonald’s & BTS partner to offer the pop group’s favourite order
Mumbai: The golden arches of McDonald’s will shine even brighter thanks to a new collaboration with the 21st century global pop icons, BTS, now featuring on the fast food franchise’s daily menu.
This one-of-a-kind menu tour has arrived at McDonald’s outlets in north India, where customers may enjoy the band’s signature order at participating restaurants across Rajasthan.
The BTS meal includes a ten-piece chicken McNuggets®, medium fries®, medium Coke, and sweet chilli and cajun dipping sauces inspired by popular recipes from McDonald’s South Korea.
“The band has great memories with McDonald’s. We’re excited about this collaboration and can’t wait to share the BTS meal with the world,” says the Bighit Music, label of BTS.
Since 2013, BTS has topped music charts and brought people together from across the world through their music and positive messages. In India too, the boy band enjoys a phenomenal fan following, especially among millennials. India ranks among the top six countries contributing to music-video views of the K-pop band.
Over the next few months, BTS fans in India will find themselves that much closer to their favourite artists, because for the first time since McDonald’s launched its celebrity signature orders program in the USA last year, the BTS Meal is available in India.
“No matter who you are, everyone has a go-to order at McDonald’s – even international superstars like BTS,” said McDonald’s India – north and east COO Rajeev Ranjan. Connaught Plaza Restaurants operates McDonald’s restaurants in north and east India. “This band is truly a global phenomenon with a fan base that knows no borders, and we couldn’t be more excited to bring the BTS meal to our customers in India,”he noted.
Customers can now order the BTS Meal through the McDonald app, in-store, at drive throughs or via McDelivery (wherever allowed by the local authorities).
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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.
