MAM
PubMatic and PhonePe partner for high-quality audience assets in India
Mumbai: PubMatic (Nasdaq: PUBM), an independent technology company delivering digital advertising’s supply chain of the future, announced its partnership today with PhonePe, India’s leading mobile payments and financial services platform.
This strategic collaboration makes PhonePe’s premium mobile app inventory and audiences available to PubMatic’s programmatic buying partners. As the industry looks for sustainable and differentiated solutions, this partnership provides Indian media buyers with a unique opportunity to tap into PhonePe’s Indic-language-speaking audiences across a diverse range of metropolitan and non-metropolitan locations.
With over 500 million registered users and over 47 per cent market share in India’s unified payments interface (UPI) instant payments ecosystem, PhonePe plays a significant role in India’s shift toward a cashless economy. As part of its commitment to fuelling product innovation and empowering more consumers and businesses to go digital, PhonePe has partnered with PubMatic to unlock the full potential of its digital advertising inventory.
PhonePe will use PubMatic’s state-of-the-art programmatic technology to deliver a privacy-compliant, fraud-free supply chain for advertisers and a better user experience for viewers.
The partnership offers advertisers access to PhonePe platform users at scale programmatically and also ensures viewers using the PhonePe platform receive relevant and engaging advertising.
“We’re excited to support PhonePe in diversifying and enhancing its digital monetisation by making its inventory and audiences available to a wider range of advertisers via programmatic technology,” said Amit Yadav, Country Manager, South Asia, at PubMatic. “This partnership helps PhonePe to maintain a positive experience for the consumers and businesses who use its platform every day, while making these high-value audiences available to PubMatic’s advertiser partners.”
PhonePe ads director of strategy and operations Sravanthi Pasumarthi, said, “We are excited to partner with PubMatic and get a foothold into the programmatic advertising space. At PhonePe, we bring to the table the widest reach in India, deep user cohorts, and a whole suite of brand solutions that enable advertisers to uniquely leverage our strengths for their brand solutions at scale. We believe that this partnership will elevate the overall advertising experience on our platform for both our partners and users.”
“The PubMatic-PhonePe collaboration underscores the growing significance of programmatic advertising within India’s evolving digital ecosystem. This strategic partnership empowers advertisers to connect with highly engaged audiences, creating meaningful interactions that drive tangible business outcomes,” Pasumarthi added.
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.
