MAM
Netcore welcomes Rajeev Soni as CRO to help grow its dominance in India
MUMBAI: Netcore, a pioneer in SaaS-based Multi-channel Marketing Automation, AI/ML-powered Martech and Contextual CPaaS, helping 3,000+ enterprises globally in their customer acquisition, engagement, and retention, today announced the appointment of Rajeev Soni as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), India. Rajeev is well known as a dynamic executive with a wealth of experience leading regional sales organizations and go-to-market operations at start-ups and public traded leading enterprise technology companies. He will be leading a 100+ strong high-performance sales and customer success team at Netcore.
“I am very excited to welcome the kind of talent and breadth of knowledge Rajeev brings as a visionary growth leader,” said Kalpit Jain, Group Chief Executive Officer of Netcore. “He has deep experience in driving sustained growth and scale, and his passion for building exceptional teams who will think, act and deliver on Netcore’s ‘Customer First’ promise aligns with our strategy and culture.”
Rajeev was most recently at bootstrapped Mobile Analytics & Martech SaaS namely appICE.io, where he served as Managing partner since 2017. During his tenure, he helped grow the company to 5X growth. Before his role at appICE, he served as Managing Director & VP Sales at Nuance Communication, where he was instrumental in accelerating Nuance’s growth momentum, M&A and customer-centricity in the South Asia market, particularly the Conversational AI & Cognitive services in the enterprise market. He has worked on management positions in Aspect Software, Microsoft, Kana (now Verint company) and Microland besides serving as a board member of companies in NA and DACH region. Rajeev is masters from IIT Delhi and Exec. MBA from IIM Indore.
Rajeev said, “Netcore has built a leadership position with its email marketing and marketing automation solutions in India. I am looking forward to making Netcore a “must-have” partner for every marketing, digital and growth leaders in India. Bootstrapped and profitable, Netcore is showing the world that it is possible to create a global technology products company from India. I am excited to be part of the management team to transform customer acquisition, growth, engagement, and retention at every customer-facing organization in India”.
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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.
