MAM
Prasidha Menon elevated to APAC brand, product, communications head at Airbnb
MUMBAI: Her’s has been a 20 year plus journey. Prasidha Menon began her career as a graduate trainee with HRD Coonsultants In Kolkata. She quietly worked there for a little over two years. Little did she imagine at that stage she would be leading brand, product communications for the Asia Pacific regions for one of the top global home sharing brand platforms– Airbnb.
Prasidha accepted her promotion from her position as regional head of communications for Airbnb for India & south east Asia gleefully.
Said she: “It’s an absolute honour and privilege to step into this regional leadership position at a time when Asia Pacific is uniquely positioned to drive Airbnb’s growth and expansion globally, and I am excited to play an integral role in this journey.”
Prior to Airbnb, Prasidha had a year log stay at Optum as director & head, brand, marketing & communications. Oyo Hotels was another stop for a couple of years vice-president & global head of communications, which was preceded by a short stint at Uber India where her last appointment was as head of communications -India and south Asia.
Her first exposure to communications was at Positive Communications for a year, which was followed by editorial jobs at two firms where she honed her writing and subbing skills. She then moved into Genesis Burson -Marsteller, following which she spent four years at Edelman in India, and in the Bay area.
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.
