MAM
Sanjay Thapar bids adieu to O&M; joins Bates as CEO
MUMBAI: Ending a 14-year stint at Ogilvy, Sanjay Thapar is joining Bates India as chief executive officer.
Thapar was North head at Ogilvy. In his new role, he will be relocating to Mumbai in July to assume the new assignment.
In January this year, Bates lost two of its senior executives – Sonal Dabral (regional ECD and chairman) and Sandeep Pathak (CEO). Consequently WPP India country head Ranjan Kapur was named the chairman of Bates India.
Confirming the news to indiantelevision.com, Thapar said, “The assignment with Bates seemed challenging and I thought it would be a good move. Moreover I am moving within the network itself.”
Both Ogilvy and Bates have the same leadership in the region headed by Tim Isaac who serves a dual role of Bates Asia chairman and Ogilvy Asia Pacific chairman.
Thapar joined O&M in 1998 as manager at the Kolkata branch and was relocated to the Delhi branch in 2002 as branch head for the advertising function. In 2004 when he was promoted as president of the Delhi branch, where he was given the responsibility of looking after all the functions of O&M Delhi, broadening his sphere from advertising to other functions as well. He was in charge of Ogilvy Landscapes (outdoor media), Ogilvy Outreach (rural communication), OgilvyLive (ground level brand communication), Ogilvy Signscapes (retail brand identity) and OgilvyAction in Delhi.
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.
