MAM
Omnicom Media Group India appointed Anand Chakravarthy as its chief growth officer
Mumbai: Omnicom Media Group (OMG) India on Tuesday announced the on-boarding of Anand Chakravarthy as its new chief growth officer. Anand is set to use his strategic foresight and over two decades of rich industry experience to create new opportunities for growth and play an instrumental role in shaping OMG India’s future trajectory.
He will report to Kartik Sharma, Group CEO of OMG India.
With over 24 years of experience in marketing, advertising, media, and entrepreneurship and having worked with many reputable businesses, all of which witnessed exponential growth under his guidance, Anand has a deep well of knowledge to draw from. Prior to this, he has led many profitable businesses, including during his leadership stints at Essence Global, Wavemaker, and Reliance Broadcast Network.
Anand’s strength lies in his ability to formulate crucial strategies that help businesses scale up and become sustainable in an extremely competitive market. Across his repertoire of experience, he has worked with global and Indian brands, including several leading D2C brands in India.
Speaking of his appointment, Omnicom Media Group India CEO Kartik Sharma said, “I am delighted to welcome Anand on board. His extensive knowledge, values-based leadership style, and commitment to delivering results will undoubtedly be a great asset to our business going forward. His work speaks for itself and shows that he has the propensity to lead and help companies capitalise on new growth opportunities in an emerging market.”
Anand Chakravarthy said, “I am thrilled to be a part of OMG India and get the opportunity to work with Kartik and his leadership team, for whom I have immense respect. OMG is recognised globally for its thought leadership and building future forward capabilities—a critical need in the industry today. Working in this ecosystem with this team and leveraging these capabilities to help brands evolve without any limitations is a fantastic opportunity. I look forward to fully committing to OMG’s vision and pushing the boundaries of innovation and growth.”
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.
