MAM
Parle renews partnership with Celebrity Cricket League for tenth season
Mumbai: Parle Products, a manufacturer of biscuits and confectionery, has extended its partnership with the Celebrity Cricket League (CCL) for its upcoming tenth season. For about seven seasons, Parle and CCL have built a relationship on shared values of passion, talent, and innovation. Together, Parle and CCL have elevated the cricketing experience for fans nationwide, blending the excitement of cricket with the joy of indulging in Parle’s delicious offerings.
This marks a significant milestone in sports and brand collaboration, showcasing the mutual commitment to excellence and entertainment. As the co-presenting sponsor, Parle, through its brand Parle 20-20 has planned an initiative called Parle 12th Man, where Parle 20-20 customers will get a unique and lifetime opportunity to be a part of their favourite CCL teams across India. To activate this, Parle has printed around 15 crore biscuit packets carrying iconic actor-player images from CCL.
Commenting on the same, Parle Products vice president Mayank Shah said, “We are thrilled to continue our partnership with the Celebrity Cricket League for its 10th season. Our collaboration brings together the love for cricket and the joy of indulging in Parle products. This edition we are celebrating the passionate supporters of the game with our 12th Man campaign and print around 15 Crore specially branded packs with CCL Player images. We reaffirm our commitment to enhancing the spectator experience for fans worldwide.”
Speaking on the continued partnership, Celebrity Cricket League founder Vishnu Vardhan Induri said, “We are happy to have Parle as the co-presenting sponsor for the tenth season of CCL. Parle has been a committed partner for CCL over the seven seasons sharing our passion towards talent and the spirit of cricket. With their continued support, CCL is scaling and we are looking forward to our biggest season this year.”
CCL kicked off the tenth season with a spectacular show in Dubai, on 2 February 2024, right in the heart of the global metropolis, projecting this season’s promo on the magnificent Burj Khalifa. It is the only sports league in India that brings 200+ actors from 8 different languages together. The grandiose league starts on February 23 in Sharjah, continuing for another three weekends in India with 20 action-packed and entertaining matches that appeal to a wide audience cohort beyond cricket fans. The adrenaline-pumping tournament will be live-streamed on Sony Sports Ten 5 and Jio Cinema along with multiple regional channels.
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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.
