MAM
Rohit Shaw boards Havas Media Network as senior vice president
MUMBAI: Rohit Shaw has rejoined Havas Media Network as a senior vice president, a significant move for the integrated marketing strategist. Starting this July, Shaw will be part of Arena Media, focusing on agency relations and key client management.
Shaw’s return to Havas follows a year as senior vice president at Bharat Media & Entertainment group (BMEG), where he spearheaded national planning and strategy, driving client growth and revenue. Before that, he spent two years as a strategic client lead consultant at Havas Media group.
His extensive career includes a three-year tenure as senior marketing manager – consumer marketing strategist at Dabur India Ltd, where he managed marketing strategy and media deployment for multiple successful brands. Prior to Dabur, Shaw was the senior manager and head of media marketing at Jubilant FoodWorks Ltd., overseeing marketing communications for Domino’s India and providing strategic recommendations based on market intelligence
Shaw’s agency experience also includes roles at GroupM, where he was an associate director of business and business group head, managing media requirements for brands like Paytm and Dabur. He also served as a business group head at Dentsu Aegis Network, handling accounts for Microsoft, Nokia, and General Motors.
Early in his career, he worked as a media planner for Emami Ltd, managing brands such as Boroplus and Navratna, and held an assistant manager position in business development at Consim Info Pvt Ltd.
Shaw’s appointment is expected to bolster Havas Media Network’s client engagement and strategic capabilities, leveraging his deep understanding of digital marketing, media planning, and consumer behaviour.
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.
