MAM
MindShare’s Archana Aggarwal to head media at P&G
MUMBAI: FMCG major P&G has roped in Archana Aggarwal from MindShare to head the company’s media unit in India.
Aggarwal, who is serving her notice period till the end of Feburary, according to advertisjng industry sources, will fill in the vacancy left after the media head of P&G was moved to a foreign posting.
The post for the country media manager at P&G has been vacant for the last two months after Shashi Mandipatty, who was looking after the FMCG major’s media duties in India, was transfered to Moscow to execute similar responsibilities.
The official spokesperson of P&G was not available for comment on the news of Aggarwal’s new assignment.
When contacted by Indiantelevision.com, Aggarwal, who is expected to join at P&G in March, said, “I would not like to speak anything on my new assignment till I officially join.”
In the same vein, Mindshare Fulcrum managing director Vikram Sakhuja refused to comment on the development.
At present, Aggarwal holds the position of media planning director at MindShare.
Aggarwal was earlier associate media director at McCann. It was at McCann that she started her career as trainee planner.
The news of Aggarwal’s departure from MindShare follows close on the heels of that of Avinash Pillai, who is set to join Time Warner company Turner International India as director ad sales for Cartoon Network and Pogo.
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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.
