MAM
Ritu Phogat joins Under Armour’s list of elite athletes
Mumbai: American sports equipment company Under Armour has partnered with Indian mixed martial arts athlete Ritu Phogat. The brand said it aims to further its mission of engaging, empowering, and inspiring athletes everywhere.
Phogat, who is popularly known as the Indian Tigress in the MMA fraternity, joins the brand’s exclusive list of athletes that includes Stephen Curry, Tom Brady, Anthony Joshua, Jordan Spieth, Michael Phelps, and Dwayne Johnson among others.
Talking about the partnership, Under Armour India’s MD, Tushar Goculdas, said, “From everyday athletes to the world’s best, Under Armour’s equips focused performers to strive and push their limits. Ritu Phogat has excelled in the international arena with her resilience, grit, and determination. We are privileged to contribute in her constant pursuit of performing better with our finest sports gear.”
Phogat said, “I am delighted and honored to join the list of elite athletes who have taken Under Armour’s values and principles to a new generation of athletes. Under Armour’s aim of helping athletes around the globe to put in the work to achieve their goals resonates with the mindset I carried with myself when I entered the ring for the first time. Every product by Under Armour is a quest to build authentic and innovative solutions that enable athletes like me to perform better. I am sure with this association, I would be able to rediscover and expand my limits.”
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.
