MAM
Saugata Gupta stays at the crease as Marico extends CEO term to 2028
MUMBAI: Still calling the shots, and how. Saugata Gupta is set for another two-year season at the helm of Marico Limited, with the FMCG major’s board approving his reappointment as managing director and CEO till March 2028.
Having joined the company back in 2004 as head of marketing, Gupta’s rise has been nothing short of a masterclass in brand leadership. From captaining the India business in 2007 to taking the reins as CEO in 2013 and MD in 2014, he’s led the Parachute-to-Set Wet empire through market winds with a steady hand and sharp instincts.
The boardroom decision, made on 2 May 2025, and filed with the stock exchanges the same day, means Gupta will notch up nearly 14 years as MD & CEO by the end of this renewed term, an impressive feat in an industry known for its churn.
Outside of Marico, Gupta also wears several advisory hats, serving as an independent director on the boards of Delhivery, Ashok Leyland, and formerly JSW Paints. His career before Marico included stints with ICICI Prudential and Mondelēz, lending him a marketing pedigree as rich as the brands he’s built.
With this extension, Marico’s leadership continuity seems sealed and set, as Gupta continues to script the brand’s next chapter in a fast-evolving consumer landscape.
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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.
