MAM
OnePlus exec Karan Sarin joins Razorpay as CMO
MUMBAI: Online payments platform Razorpay has appointed Karan Sarin as the chief marketing officer. Sarin, who most recently served as the Head of Marketing for OnePlus India, will now focus on building Razorpay’s brand, nationally & globally to generate customer demand, planning strategic events and designing the company’s communication strategy.
“As we grow and expand our technological footing with multiple stakeholders across the ecosystem, I’m confident that Karan’s expertise, will be invaluable. Karan has achieved many milestones in his career and has been instrumental in building some of the leading startup brands in India. I’m thrilled Karan will be joining our company to play a prominent role in leading the journey,” said Razorpay CEO and co-founder Harshil Mathur.
“Razorpay’s journey is inspiring, and it’s amazing to see how the company has emerged to be one of leading Indian fintech startups in such a short period. I am happy to be a part of this growth story. There are no gold-standards when it comes to B2B marketing in India. At Razorpay, we want to lead and set a high benchmark for B2B marketing and that’s the most exciting part about my new role”, said Sarin.
Razorpay is the second India focused company to be selected to the Y Combinator. Razorpay has been rapidly growing since its inception in 2014, with over 10,000 merchants including the likes of Videocon, Nykaa, Craftsvilla, Zerodha, NestAway, Udacity and Chai Point among others. Razorpay’s other investors include MasterCard, Tiger Global, and Matrix Partners.
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.
