MAM
PhonePe launches a new Savings Product to help Indians earn more
Mumbai: PhonePe, India’s leading digital payments platform today announced the launch of a new savings product ‘Liquid Fund’ on its app. The all-digital product will help over 175 million PhonePe users grow their savings by earning higher short term FD-like returns with the ease and liquidity of a Savings Account.
Users can begin saving with as low as Rs.500/- in a completely secure and paperless process in less than 5 minutes. Liquid Funds are the best way for new users to experience Mutual Funds as the money is invested in safer instruments such as bank and government securities. Customers can withdraw their money instantly – anytime and from anywhere*. There is no lock-in period and the customer does not have to maintain a minimum balance. The best part is that customers can watch their money grow every day.
With this launch, PhonePe is taking large strides towards its goal of expanding awareness and adoption of Financial Services products in India. PhonePe aims to achieve this by creating simple products and offerings that are intuitive for customers to understand and easy to apply for. PhonePe’s Liquid Fund product is targeted at users across India including those from smaller towns and cities, who have never experienced solutions beyond Savings Accounts. PhonePe already sees over 56% of its transactions from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
Speaking on the launch, Terence Lucien, Head of Mutual Funds, PhonePe, said, “This is our second product in the Mutual Funds space after Tax Saving Funds where we have created a completely digital investment flow for our users. Liquid Funds will allow millions of our users to earn higher returns on their savings with the ability to withdraw their money instantly 24×7*. We will continue to add more such financial solutions for our users to manage their money and fulfill their life aspirations in a better way.”
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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.
