MAM
Orange and BBC team up to offer news on SMS
MUMBAI: Mobile service provider Orange and BBC World Service have announced the launch of a new ‘BBC news on SMS’ service.
The service has been launched in Mumbai. Orange’s BBC News on SMS service offers breaking news, business news and sports news from all parts of the world. The service is available to Orange users round the clock, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Orange users need to type ‘BBC’ and send it as an SMS to 12323 to get the latest BBC news from across the world.
Commenting on the launch of BBC news service on SMS VP Corporate Marketing, Orange Sanjeev Vohra said: ” This truly marks a convergence of radio, television and cellular service. BBC is the international benchmark for quality news reportage. This service is borne out of our commitment to provide quality content that is truly the best in the world. We are happy to be partnering the BBC for this service that combines rich news content with the convenience of SMS. Orange users can now read the latest BBC international news right at the moment it is being aired across the world, on their cellular handsets. “
Commenting on BBC’s alliance with Orange Head of Business Development BBC World Service Miles Palmer said: “It combines the best of the BBC’s comprehensive and impartial information services with Orange’s excellent mobile network. India is an important market for the BBC. We have a long established presence in India and are widely respected. India is an information hungry country and mobile phones offer an additional opportunity to feed people’s appetites.”
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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.
