MAM
PhonePe recognized among India’s best workplaces by the Great Place to Work Institute
Bengaluru: PhonePe, India’s leading digital payments platform today announced that it has been recognized among the country’s top workplaces in the Technology sector by the Great Place to Work Institute. The survey is India’s largest annual study of workplace excellence based on employee feedback and also includes a rigorous assessment process by the Great Place to Work Institute. The Great Place to Work certification is considered as the ‘Gold Standard’ in workplace culture assessment and recognition.
This year, more than 800 organizations applied to the Great Place to Work Institute to undertake the assessment, making it the largest study in the space of workplace recognition. The study identified the best companies to work across 20+ industries. In the Technology sector, Great Place to Work assessed nearly 200 organizations, and recognised PhonePe among India’s best workplaces in this sector.
Commenting on the development, Manmeet Sandhu, Chief People Officer, PhonePe said, "We are delighted to be recognized among India’s best workplaces. We strive to provide employees with a rich learning experience where they get to solve a variety of business problems right from day 1. Our flat structure and cross functional pods enable employees to understand the wider organisational context empowering them to own a wide variety of solutions. The scale and speed of growth gives people the opportunity to solve several large-scale & highly complex problems. At PhonePe, we are building payment solutions that are positively impacting the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians. We have been able to super charge this growth by hiring and retaining the best talent in the country. We will continue to invest in our people and culture to build a great company and provide our employees with rewarding careers.”
PhonePe continually strives to provide a thriving, dynamic work environment for its employees to perform and grow. The company has developed several programs for individual learning and development and also hosts fortnightly learning sessions where employees share their knowledge and skills with their colleagues on a variety of topics not strictly confined to their area of work (ranges from new technology to painting, from presentation skills to making your own aquarium).
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.
