MAM
Neeraj Chopra joins team Visa as brand ambassador in India
Mumbai: Visa Inc. (NYSE: V), the in digital payments, has signed up Olympic gold medalist and World no. 1 in men’s javelin throw, Neeraj Chopra as a Team Visa athlete, ahead of the Olympic Games Paris 2024. Chopra’s collaboration with Visa makes him the second athlete from India to join team Visa along with other global athletes and reinforces Visa’s salience in and commitment towards sports.
“Sports is one of the strongest unifying factors worldwide and Visa is delighted to have the nation’s pride, Neeraj Chopra, join Team Visa and be our brand ambassador. As a trusted brand in digital payments, we truly believe in uplifting everyone, everywhere. Thus, by championing sports and sportspersons and our association with India’s Olympics icon Neeraj Chopra, we underscore our dedication to support inspirational athletes across sporting disciplines”, said Visa group country manager, India and South Asia, Sandeep Ghosh.
Neeraj Chopra, who made history as the first track and field athlete to win a gold medal for India at the Olympics, said, “I am excited to be associated with Visa, a brand that all of us have been so familiar with. Trust and consistency are essentials of every partnership and Visa has stood for these principles for several years now. I hope that through this association, we can inspire people to go from strength to strength with the values of hard work and consistent commitment.”
Visa has a history of collaborating with renowned sports personalities. In 2019, Visa signed badminton ace PV Sindhu as the first Team Visa athlete from India, for the Olympics Games Tokyo 2020. Visa has supported the Olympic and Paralympic Games as a worldwide sponsor since 1986, a commitment that extends through 2032, serving as the Exclusive Payment Technology partner. Major sports events like the Olympics, FIFA World Cup and Super Bowl attract a diverse and global audience. As a partner, Visa ensures safe and secure digital payments at these events – for tickets, merchandise and concessions, regardless of location or currency.
AD Agencies
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.
