MAM
mTalkz appoints Abhishek Prakash as VP – business development
NEW DELHI: Messaging and communications product provider, mTalkz Mobility Services has appointed Abhishek Prakash as VP – business development.
Prakash is a strategic sales leader, focused on revenue growth and solution sales. In the past, he has worked with corporates like IBM, Wipro, HCL America Inc and Tata Group. He holds an engineering degree from IIT Roorkee, an MBA from IIM Indore, and a PGPX from Anderson School of Management, The University of California. He is generally respected in professional circles for a deep understanding of enterprise profitability, and the ability to bind multiple business aspects together for securing a competitive advantage. He is an ardent cyclist and a yoga enthusiast.
Abhishek Prakash said, “We are in exciting times and digital convergence is going through the next level of discovery. We are going to see some amazing cases and integrations being made possible with the help of the messaging products. A more sensible and rich way of customer engagement is going to emerge and we at mTalkz, look forward to becoming a unicorn in the next three years.”
mTalkz CEO Shelly Prakash said, “Our industry is all about engaging with large corporate businesses and enabling new possibilities. Abhishek comes in as a reputed sales leader, and his experience in multiple industries like banking, retail, petroleum, insurance, telecom, FMCG and technology will help us to continue to grow at 5X per year. We are expanding our technology offerings and working on creating a rich platform to enable multiple integrations through messaging and AI-driven conversations. In the coming months, the market will see some interesting service products getting launched from our stable. We also look forward to launching the mTalkz brand in overseas markets shortly.”
mTalkz is a leading bulk SMS service provider in India. It uses the combination of technology and innovation to provide up-to-date promotional SMS services to its clients. Via its bulk SMS service, it targets several customers at once without any bottlenecks and helps enterprises boost their businesses.
The brand has recently launched a WhatsApp based OTP service that will enable corporates to deliver OTP through WhatsApp using a common handle. This will come in form of a cloud service and can be consumed by websites, CRM, ERP and other SAAS systems as required.
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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.
