MAM
Scarecrow bags Flourish milk and dairy portfolio
MUMBAI: Ahmedabad milk and dairy brand Flourish has roped in indie agency Scarecrow Communications Ltd for its creative mandate. The agency will be handing the brand from its Mumbai office while Ahmedabad based One Advertising will continue to be the communication arm for the brand in Gujarat.
Flourish PureFoods is setting up its cow farms designed as exquisite resort campuses with comfortable cattle housing infrastructure and milking technology. They will manufacture and market long life milk, unique milk products along with other high quality and healthy food products.
Flourish owner Sushil Handa said, “Scarecrow fits the bill. In fact, they almost presented my dream and added some welcome new dimensions right before my eyes. I like the quirky energy they possess and the rare ability to think from an entrepreneur‘s POV.”
Scarecrow founder director Manish Bhatt said, “Milk is an interesting product category to work on and a refreshing opportunity for the agency‘s creative juices to blend with.”
Scarecrow founder director Arunava (Joy) Sengupta said, “Working towards fulfilling Flourish Team‘s dream will only strengthen the agency‘s conviction in its brand building capabilities. Milk is known to be healthy and I believe it‘s so for our businesses as well.”
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.
