MAM
Pyxis One raises $17 million in series B funding
Mumbai: Pyxis One, a California-based tech startup that aims to revolutionise marketing and consumer intelligence by providing an all-in-one, codeless AI platform, has closed $17 million in series B funding. With total funding of $24 million, the company plans to use this round of capital for investments in product development and to expand to new markets.
Celesta Capital and Premji Invest have co-led the round with participation from previous investors Chiratae Ventures, pi Ventures, and Exfinity Venture Partners. “Every enterprise is either already rearchitecting themselves to adopt AI, or are dependent on one or more AI-driven platforms,” said Premji Invest partner Atul Gupta. “Pyxis One stands out by helping consumer-first enterprises adopt AI for their marketing and business growth without having to disrupt the business at all.”
Pyxis One enables enterprises to scale accurate data-driven marketing. The startup’s codeless AI ecosystem comprises dozens of AI models deployed across different aspects such as targeting, optimisation, creative recommendation, and consumer research, enabling a complete ecosystem that can help teams collaborate, and leverage capabilities enabled by the adoption of AI.
“Modern businesses are looking to use advanced elements of artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver targeted and effective marketing,” said Celesta Capital founding managing partner Sriram Viswanathan. “These capabilities are important for enterprises looking to benefit from next-generation marketing technologies. Pyxis One’s platform delivers on this promise, and we are delighted to back this team to realise this potential.”
The company is looking to add over 200 AI models to the AI infrastructure over the next two years. These AI models are trained with billions of cross-industry data points that brands from every industry can utilise. The platform also future-proofs AI structure and deployment to inherit new models and customise them without any rework.
“Marketing can become 10 times more efficient if every team that plays a role in appealing to consumers can collaborate and work together using precise AI-driven insights,” said Pyxis One global CEO Shubham A Mishra. “With AI’s agility and scalability, we bridge the gap between marketers and data scientists and enable them to make better decisions in the backdrop of accurate and dynamic consumer insights. The new funds will enable us to speed up product development, hire more AI experts and data scientists, and expand our sales and marketing to additional markets.”
The AI SaaS startup has witnessed a 550 per cent growth since its inception in 2018 and has a customer base across different industries including retail, automotive, healthcare, finance, and food tech. These customers are witnessing at least a 30 pert cent increase in their marketing efficiency and consumer intelligence, on average, said the statement.
“The real clincher is that our ecosystem of products is completely codeless thereby easing the adoption of AI for our customers,” said APAC CEO Neel Pandya. “Our series B funding will allow us to aggressively pursue the development of more AI models to strengthen the infrastructure and expand into newer markets.”
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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.
