MAM
Mindshare South Asia announces agency restructuring, key appointments
MUMBAI: Media agency Mindshare has announced an organisation restructure that mirrors the agency’s ambition to become collaborative in client success and navigate its marketing agenda with intelligence and agility.
After the tremendous success of team Fulcrum in delivering client delight and industry accolades, Amin Lakhani is elevated and has taken on a larger role as president of client leadership at Mindshare India. In his new role, Lakhani is responsible to further strengthen client relationships and drive client growth in a cross media market. He will manage core client capabilities across all offices in the country. During his 14 years at GroupM and Mindshare, Lakhani has grown from strength to strength and will continue to be a key growth contributor in the new role.
Anita Kotwani with her unique brand of leadership at Mindshare West has ensured remarkable growth of all business teams in the region. Her continued success and motivation are evident from the number of accolades and the stream of client appreciation her teams have acquired year after year.
Given Mindshare’s emphasis on growth through diversification, Kotwani has been promoted to senior vice president, responsible for new business development across the market. In addition to this, she will also drive Horizontality, and work closely with the larger marketing ecosystem.
As Lakhani transitions into his new role, Premjeet Sodhi will join Mindshare South Asia as senior vice president at Mindshare Fulcrum, South Asia, and will lead. In his current assignment, Sodhi is the COO at Initiative/ BPN, part of the IPG group, where he handles strategy and new business development for the company. He manages clients such as Amazon, Reckitt, Gionee, Kraft Heinz, Infoedge and Bajaj Auto. With a passion for brands, Sodhi has kept pace with the evolving media space and has contributed immensely in various leadership roles. His new role is effective March 2018.
Mindshare South Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar says, “As we enter 2018, we are accelerating transformation which is true to our DNA. We are clear on our strategic priorities, strengthening our connections with a growing universe of clients, consumers, brands and partners in the marketing ecosystem. To be able to do so, we now have the leadership and structure within our organisation to continue our path to greater success, and our renewed focus on creating a disruptive Mindshare with speed, provocation, teamwork.”
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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.
