MAM
Rajendra Gupta joins Rediffusion as chief growth officer
Mumbai: Rediffusion has announced the appointment of Rajendra Gupta as chief growth officer, based at its corporate office here.
An engineer from BHU-IT and an MBA from FMS Delhi, Gupta has been in advertising, industrial solutioning and telecom for well over 35 years. This will be his second stint at Rediffusion. He earlier worked at Rediffusion Delhi and Mumbai from 1994 to 2002. “Rediffusion is my home. I have had some of my biggest professional successes and victories here. I hope that track record remains intact and unblemished in this innings too,” said Gupta.
Gupta will be a group resource with growth and business development responsibilities across Rediffusion, Everest, Rediffusion Healthcare, Rediffusion Direct (recently rechristened Rediffusion FutureTech), Rediffusion SmartMedia, Mogae Media and the Indian Institute of Human Brands (IIHB), said the agency in a statement.
Gupta had worked at Dunlop and Wipro before joining Rediffusion in the mid-’90s. He was seconded to Bharti twice by Rediffusion – first to Airtel Delhi and then to Bharti Madhya Pradesh to work as an expert implant in then growing, new company. He has also worked in telecom with Reliance for over a decade.
In his earlier tenure at Rediffusion, Gupta was instrumental in bringing the coveted Bharti group business to the agency. He was part of the team that launched Airtel in 1995. During his previous stint, Rajendra led successful pitches to bring in Casio, Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Atlas cycles, Singer sewing machines, BPL, and many more accounts to the agency, said the statement.
“Rajendra is special. He is also Rediffusion’s lucky mascot for new business and new horizons. He combines the aggressiveness of a good salesman with a very good understanding of technology. And over the years he has become excellent advertising professional. Such a combination of virtues and talent is rare,” stated Rediffusion managing director Sandeep Goyal.
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.
