MAM
Rakesh Hinduja to step down as Leo Burnett West COO
MUMBAI: Leo Burnett Group India, has announced that Leo Burnett west COO Rakesh Hinduja will be moving on from the agency in order to pursue other opportunities.
Rakesh has been with the group for more than 14 years and in his current role was COO west for Leo Burnett India.
In his five-year stint at Leo Burnett, Rakesh played a crucial role in building Leo Burnett’s ‘new-age’ solution ecosystem, which included creating highly motivated and talented teams. He has helped double the agency’s Mumbai office which won multiple accounts and created memorable work over the last few years by building the business with genuine partnership with clients and brands. He has created wave 3 ‘new age’ solutions consistently across brands. His disproportionate focus on improving the product helped win at various international and local awards including The Cannes Lions, The One Show, D&AD, Spikes Asia, Effies and more.
Leo Burnett South Asia MD India & chief strategy officer Dheeraj Sinha said, “Rakesh had a great run with us. He’s been a great business partner and a dear friend. We wish him all the very best. We are fortunate that we have a stellar team of business, creative and strategy leaders in our Mumbai office, who continue to run our businesses. We have a great momentum at Leo Burnett in terms of new business wins and our creative work. We continue to be relentlessly focused on creating great work and great growth.”
Leo Burnett South Asia MD India & chief creative officer Rajdeepak Das said, “Rakesh is a great friend and a brother to me. In his stint at Leo Burnett, he’s also been one of the core people behind creating some legendary work and big business wins. He partnered the agency to lead the third wave. We have some crazy memories which I will cherish. And I wish him nothing but the best for his future.”
Rakesh Hinduja said, "I’ve enjoyed every day of my stint at Leo Burnett. Creating world class work which makes real business impact has been truly fulfilling. We have had incredible success at the agency in the last few years with a magical group of people that worked together. In this journey, I have made some fabulous friends at the agency and clients. I’m very excited about the future. The next chapter will be glorious."
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.
