MAM
Rahul Vengalil joins tgthr as CEO and co-founder
Mumbai: In a bold and strategic move, Rahul Vengalil is set to lead the charge as the CEO and co-founder of tgthr effective immediately, a visionary ad agency poised to redefine the industry. Positioned as a ‘future-focused, full-funnel ad agency,’ tgthr is already making waves with its headquarters in Mumbai and branches located in Bengaluru and Delhi NCR.
With a rich background and a proven track record in advertising, Rahul Vengalil is well-equipped to steer tgthr towards new heights. His most recent role as the Executive Director at Everest Brand Solutions, which he successfully revived in 2022, showcased his ability to lead with vision and strategic insight. In the past, he has also held the position of Managing Partner at Isobar and helped grow its presence in India for almost a decade.
As CEO at tgthr, Rahul Vengalil will lead client relationships and business across the units. He will also take forward the agency’s promise of a full-funnel approach by integrating media services into the agency offerings, bringing to the forefront his decades of experience in handling media.
Rahul Vengalil’s extensive experience spans across diverse categories, including automobile, fashion, consumer durables, real estate, retail, technology, and FMCG. This broad exposure positions him as a leader capable of navigating the unique challenges posed by different industries, further enhancing tgthr’s versatility and adaptability.
Remarkably, this venture is not Rahul Vengalil’s first foray into entrepreneurship. In 2017, he co-founded What Clicks, India’s pioneering digital media audit firm. This successful initiative demonstrated his ability to identify gaps in the market and introduce innovative solutions.
tgthr CCO and co-founder Aalap Desai added, “We don’t become a full-funnel agency by just calling ourselves ‘full-funnel’. We can only achieve it by having people who not just come with that expertise but command that expertise. Rahul is exactly that. Why he belongs at tgthr, more than anywhere else is because he has the head to drive business and has the heart to care about people, too.”
tgthr CEO and co-founder Rahul Vengalil added, “tgthr has already earned a reputation as a place where happiness meets creativity to produce extraordinary results, setting the foundation for an exciting journey into the future. We aim to simplify the complexities of today’s diverse mediums and the ever-changing technology. I intend to guide our clients through the dynamic advertising landscape and not just create compelling brand stories for them but also help distribute them. A rehaul of the old ways of advertising requires radical thinking, ingenuity, and passion, which can only be enabled in an ecosystem like tgthr.”
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.
