MAM
Neeraj Chopra signs first brand endorsement with Tata AIA post Tokyo win
Mumbai: Tata AIA Life Insurance has announced the signing of a multi-year brand partnership with Indian athlete and Olympic gold medallist Neeraj Chopra as its brand ambassador on Wednesday. This association marks the very first brand partnership to be signed with the champion javelin thrower post his historic Olympic win.
Chopra closely embodies Tata AIA’s vision of enabling dreams and inspiring healthier and happier lives and its core value of passion for excellence, said the company in a statement. Over the next few years, he will support Tata AIA’s efforts in offering life protection and health & wellness solutions to its consumers across the country, it added.
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has also underlined the need for life and health insurance, more emphatically than ever. With a premium-to-GDP penetration of less than 3.5 per cent in India (as per Swiss Re Sigma report on World Insurance, 2021), there is a clear and urgent need to fast-track the insurance journey in the country.
Chopra’s association with Tata AIA stems from his own experience and understanding of the need for adequate life and health cover and timely planning for one’s key life milestones, stated the brand.
Welcoming Chopra on board, Tata AIA Life Insurance, executive vice president and chief distribution officer, Venky Iyer said, “As a VSM awardee in the Army and a National icon today, Neeraj symbolises incredible passion for excellence and a great commitment to serving the nation. For us at Tata AIA, his sports journey echoes greatly with our vision of enabling dreams and inspiring healthier and happier lives. And quite like we observe in Neeraj’s journey, passion for excellence, and an obsession to do the best for our consumers, the people of India, are among the core values at Tata AIA.”
Speaking on the association, Chopra said, “Joining the Tata AIA family was a logical step for me. I firmly believe that there is a need to educate Indians, especially the youth, about the need for life insurance and to help them plan for their financial goals, at the right time. Further, the pandemic has made us realize the key need to pursue physical and emotional wellbeing in our day-to-day life.”
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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.
