MAM
Rajiv Garg appointed MD of Dish TV
NEW DELHI: Dish TV, India’s first direct-to-home (DTH) service, has got itself a new managing director in Rajiv Garg.
Garg, who has been with the Essel Corporate Group for the last three years, will be responsible for spearheading all initiatives at Dish TV with an aim to achieve rapid expansion.
Garg’s appointment, according to sources in the company, has been made in New Era Entertainment Network Limited (NEENL), which manages the affairs of Dish TV. His involvement would expand the existing Dish TV team, which also includes the company’s CEO and old Zee hand Sunil Khanna.
The sources said that, in recent times, under Garg’s leadership, Dish TV has seen an upsurge in the subscriber base. Incidentally, within the company his designation is being referred to as Dish TV’s activity managing director.
Garg has diverse industry experience and his previous stints in senior positions include Raymond’s Ltd, Jindal Saw Pipes Ltd, and Lazard India Ltd.
One of the recent achievements of Garg has been to successfully launch `har chhat par’ (a dish on every roof top) marketing initiative that envisages slashing the price of hardware and set top box by up to 50 per cent. This has seen an upsurge in the subscriber base of Dish TV, which is presently over 200,000.
This scheme gives consumers more than 86 channels for Rs 3,990, which includes a digital set top box, satellite dish antenna, installation fees and subscription charges for one year.
With the government clearing the DTH applications of Space TV (a Tata and Star joint venture) and Sun Group, the industry expects renewed and hectic activity in this segment of broadcasting. But before Space TV and Sun establish their DTH services, they would have to contend with Dish TV, which certainly enjoys a first-mover’s advantage, as also Indian pubcaster KU-band free service DD Direct Plus.
Dish TV currently offers 113 TV and 13 radio channels.
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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.
