MAM
Orchard Advertising strengthens its creative team
MUMBAI: Orchard Advertising, a part of the Leo Burnett Group, has strengthened its creative team with the appointment of Vinod Eshwer and Neel Roy Cruz as executive creative directors based at its Bengaluru office.
The duo joins from McCann Bangalore and will report to Leo Burnett India CCO RajDeepak Das.
Speaking on the appointment, Das said, “Our extensive 5-month hunt for a creative leadership team at Orchard Bangalore ended with Vinod and Neel, who are extremely talented individuals having a strong desire to produce new-age integrated work by thinking beyond traditional media and delivering conversations, acts, and experiences to help brands achieve their goals in the marketplace.”
Orchard Advertising CCO Kaizad Pardiwalla added, “Vinod and Neel coming on board to lead Orchard Bangalore’s creative team is a decisive step in making Orchard one of the best integrated communications company in India. Both are a highly talented and celebrated team and their creative ideology is in sync with that of Orchard India’s i.e. to create acts based on strong ideas and insights which help bring alive the purpose of the brands and create a positive impact on our clients’ businesses.”
The duo said, “When Raj revealed the agency’s plans and the journey it is embarking upon by handpicking talent and encouraging them to think beyond traditional media, and to communicate in new ways using digital and technology made us pack our bags and hop on board. We are truly living in exciting times where commerce and communication are being shaped and reshaped with every click and swipe. We have got e-butterflies in our bellies.”
Both Eshwer and Cruz have more than 15 years of advertising experience. Some of the brands that they have worked on together include TVS, Tata Beverages, Britannia and ITC.
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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.
