MAM
Media Mantra strengthens its leadership team; appoints Rahul Mehta as CEO
MUMBAI: Integrated communications firm Media Mantra strengthened its leadership team with the appointment of Rahul Mehta as the chief executive officer of its operations in India. Tasked with the responsibility of driving strategic business growth, Mehta will focus on consolidating and expanding the business across existing and new practice areas, launching new services & providing strategic senior counsel to clients. He will work directly with Media Mantra founding director Udit Pathak.
With over 22 years of agency and corporate experience, Mehta has served in senior leadership roles for over 15 years including as COO with Kaizzen, senior VP & general manager with Fleishman Hillard and Branch Head with Weber Shandwick. He is also a past winner of the Weber Shandwick Asia Pacific Leadership Award.
“Media Mantra is currently undergoing a very exciting phase of growth. This year, one of the key focus areas for us was to strengthen our leadership team by adding well-respected professionals like Rahul, who is a proven communications expert with strong expertise in executing innovative and integrated client campaigns,” Media Mantra founding director Udit Pathak said.
“His vast experience and immense knowledge makes him a perfect fit for overseeing our India operations as part of the growing leadership team. He will provide strategic insights and drive impact and outcomes for our growing list of clients. While working closely with me, he will play a vital role in accelerating collective growth of the organization. As we inch closer to our 10th anniversary this August, Rahul’s appointment is just the beginning of bigger and better things to come in future for the MM family,” he further said.
“I am excited to join Media Mantra at this exciting juncture, where the agency has laid a strong foundation to enter the next phase of its strong growth journey. Media Mantra has a proven track record of executing award-winning campaigns for clients and I look forward to working alongside Udit to drive a culture of excellence for clients across existing and new service offerings, with a clear focus on delivering communication outcomes that have a measurable impact on business outcomes,” Rahul Mehta said.
A post-graduate in Advertising and Communications management from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mehta brings expertise in corporate reputation management, brand reputation management, crisis management, social media influencer campaigns, internal communications, public affairs, senior executive training and brand marketing. His area of expertise transcends diverse sectors such as consumer durables, FMCG, auto, B2B, BFSI, healthcare, aviation, travel & tourism, telecom, healthcare, and fashion and lifestyle.
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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.
