MAM
Phoenix Marketcity Chennai dazzles with Euphoria 2025
MUMBAI: Phoenix Marketcity Chennai kicked off the festive season with Euphoria 2025 – A Celebration of Sorts, its spectacular annual Diwali bash. This year’s edition, themed the five elements – earth, water, fire, air, and ether, transformed the mall into a multisensory playground of fashion, music, theatre, and art.
The highlight of the evening was a fashion extravaganza curated by India’s style guru Prasad Bidapa, showcasing designs inspired by nature’s harmony. Hindi cinema star Dino Morea stole the show as the runway’s showstopper, while soulful performances by Charu Semwal added melodic magic to the night.
Phoenix Marketcity Chennai centre director – Phoenix Mall of Asia & marketing director – South Rituu Jai Mehhta said, “Euphoria has become one of Chennai’s most anticipated festive celebrations, bringing together fashion, culture, and entertainment. This year’s edition, part of the Phoenix Festival – 90 Days of Fun, is just the start of a season filled with creativity, joy, and immersive experiences for our patrons.”
Prasad Bidapa added, “Designing a show in Chennai is always inspiring. With its rich tradition and modernity, from Kanchivarams to temple-border motifs, Euphoria 2025 celebrates the city’s uniqueness through fashion, performance, and storytelling.”
The evening drew a lively crowd of shoppers, influencers, celebrities, and families, all reveling in the festive decor, capturing vibrant moments, and soaking in the magic of the season.
With Euphoria 2025, Phoenix Marketcity reaffirmed its status as Chennai’s premier destination for lifestyle, fashion, and entertainment, where every celebration is a larger-than-life experience.
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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.
