MAM
PumPumPum appoints Nikhil Sharma as AVP – growth & marketing
MUMBAI: Homegrown used car corporate leasing and subscription company, PumPumPum announced the expansion of its leadership team with the appointment of Nikhil Sharma as the assistant vice president of growth and marketing. In his new role, Sharma will be responsible for scaling up and executing PumPumPum’s integrated marketing strategies and driving the company’s corporate reputation forward with a focus on 360-degree branding efforts.
Sharma is a marketing professional with over 14 years of experience working with some of the challenging brands in the country. He founded two different start-ups, one a digital marketing agency, A Cup of Tea, and the other, an FMCG brand, Golden Nectar, where he was in charge of marketing and growth. Prior to that, Sharma was also associated with AVIS India, leading India’s marketing team.
Welcoming him aboard, PumPumPum CEO & founder Tarun Lawadia, and co-founder & CGO Sameer Kalra said, “We are excited to welcome Nikhil to the leadership team. His experience across industries is a strength we can leverage as a subscription to a used car is a nascent concept in India, and we need an experienced and creative mind to tap that segment of consumer buying habit. Given the growth in the car leasing niche market, Nikhil’s experience in the mobility industry along with his innovative marketing and growth strategies will be invaluable in helping us achieve our goal of becoming India’s largest car leasing company.”
Nikhil Sharma said, “PumPumPum is based on a unique business model that has the potential to disrupt the current used-car ecosystem. I admire the company and its leadership for its dynamic work culture, founding values, and strong footprint in the market. I am stoked to be part of the team to contribute to its next milestones to disrupt the car leasing market.”
The company plans to reach over 15 cities in the span of the next three years to leverage the post-pandemic demand for personal transportation over public transportation.
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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.
