AD Agencies
Omnicom announces leadership for India as legacy giants fold into global networks
MUMBAI: Omnicom has thrown the dice on India, installing Prasoon Joshi as chairman and Aditya Kanthy as president and managing director of Omnicom Advertising in the country. The pair will steer operations from 1 January 2026, reporting to Sean Donovan, president of Omnicom Advertising Asia. S Subramanyeswar—Subbu to most—completes the power trio as chief strategy officer for India and chief knowledge officer for Asia.
The shake-up follows Omnicom’s absorption of IPG last week and the subsequent cremation of three legendary agency nameplates: DDB, FCB and MullenLowe. All three are being folded into Omnicom’s global triumvirate of BBDO, McCann and TBWA. FCB slides into BBDO’s embrace, while DDB and MullenLowe join TBWA’s ranks.
In India, the new structure leans heavily on home-grown equity. TBWALintas, BBDO Group and McCann will fly the flag, bolstered by the brand muscle of Lintas, Ulka and Mudra—names that still carry weight in Indian advertising’s collective memory.
The leadership shuffle reads like a game of musical chairs with purpose. Dheeraj Sinha takes charge of McCann in India, with Rahul Mathew overseeing creative. Josy Paul stays put at BBDO, though a refreshed team is promised soon. Govind Pandey and Prateek Bhardwaj will run the merged TBWALintas operation, while Chandni Shah becomes chief executive of the combined Kinnect and 22feet Tribal outfit. Rohan Mehta gets the brief for digital integration across the group.
Donovan insists the transition will keep clients steady whilst creating room for talent to flourish. The bet, essentially, is that scale and opportunity will trump nostalgia for the old marques.
The new guard takes the reins on New Year’s Day. Whether they can shuffle India’s advertising deck into a winning hand remains to be seen—but Omnicom is betting big that fresh faces and familiar brands make for a killer combination.
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.
