AD Agencies
Percept restructures the Advertising business – MASH Advertising merges with IBD India
MUMBAI: Forget love, mergers are in the air these days. The latest being MASH Advertising with IBD India.
Percept has restructured its advertising business to merge the two entities with effect from 1 April. The restructure will enable Percept to offer better synergies, streamline operations and efficiencies between the two agencies, and provide a greater array of services and solutions to stakeholders.
Rahul Gupta has been elevated to managing director of the merged business wef 1 April. Gupta had set up ByDesign in 1994 to offer strategic brand services based on superior creativity, and in 2007 ByDesign entered into a JV with Percept–Hakuhodo to form IBD India.
Today IBD India offers a complete 360 degree approach in providing brand and marketing solutions to clients. Over the years Rahul has brought invaluable expertise to the many dynamic brands handled by IBD India including SSK Group, Panasonic, PNB Housing, Tupperware, Taj Group of Hotels, K Raheja Corp and Tilaknagar.
Going forward, Gupta’s in-depth knowledge of brands and the dynamics within which they operate will enable him to continue to offer unique and innovative integrated brand development solutions and creative strategies for the many successful brands handled by MASH Advertising and IBD India.
Amitabha Lahiri has been elevated to chief executive officer of the merged business. Lahiri has been associated with the Percept group in different leadership roles for over seven years. He joined as senior vice president, Hakuhodo Percept India and was later elevated to the position of COO during which Hakuhdo Percept witnessed a series of prestigious business wins including Wagon R, Grand Vitara & A-star from Maruri Suzuki, Carrier, Toshiba, Daikin, Unicharm, Sukam and Hindware.
In 2011 Lahiri became CEO of the newly incepted MASH India – a subsidiary of Percept/H, and within a span of two years attained a diversity of prominent businesses including Carrier, Toshiba, Haier, Philips, Kyocera Mita, DLF and Parsvnath. His proficiency on a wide array of businesses will enable to take the newly merged entity to the next level of success.
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.
