MAM
Priti Murthy joins GroupM as president, GroupM Services India
Mumbai: GroupM India on Thursday announced the appointment of Priti Murthy as president, GroupM Services India. In her new role, Murthy would also be part of the GroupM India executive committee.
Murthy will work closely with GroupM’s regional leadership team in ensuring seamless adoption of all the initiatives. She will report to GroupM South Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar and GroupM Asia Pacific COO Jon Thurlow. GroupM Services India leadership team would report to Murthy, stated the agency.
As president of GroupM Services, she will be leading the centre of delivery excellence that comprises biddable, non-biddable, analytics, and reporting. Along with her strong leadership team, Murthy would work closely with agencies to understand their needs, incorporating best-in-class delivery metrics with ‘improvise and improve’ as the approach to continued excellence, said the statement.
“It is a homecoming for Priti and strengthening of GroupM India leadership team with yet another remarkable industry leader. Priti’s product mindset powered by a unique blend of experience in setting and executing an organisation-wide vision will enrich the GroupM teams alike,” said Prasanth Kumar. “As one of the most regarded women leaders in the industry, Priti also believes in GroupM’s future centric business approach and has always focused on building purpose-driven culture as a key leadership responsibility.”
As an industry veteran, Murthy has spent a large part of her over a 22-year long career with GroupM. She has been an immensely effective leader contributing to the organisation in all her previous roles held within Wavemaker (née Maxus Global) during her 13-year stint. Her last held role with GroupM was as the chief strategy officer at Maxus Global. She has been heading OMD India as the chief executive officer for the last four years.
“It is one of the best eras in the media industry, revival and rejuvenation being the focus. I am delighted to join GroupM, to walk the path to the future transformation of GroupM offerings in the marketplace and magnify the operational excellence that it is known for,” stated Murthy. “With GroupM’s focus on creating the best in class and house of excellence, my role will be to bring in the right mix of talent, process, and tech to ensure quality assurance and continuous improvement for biddable and non-biddable media for our partners and clients. I am looking forward to working with Prasanth and the entire ExCo in driving this focus.”
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.
