MAM
Smile Group names Gagandeep Singh Bedi to lead Healthtech venture builder in Asia
MUMBAI: Smile Group has taken a bold step into Healthtech. The tech investment and venture-building firm has named pharma industry veteran Gagandeep Singh Bedi as managing partner to lead its new Healthtech Venture Builder initiative, marking its formal foray into a space projected to hit $50 billion across APAC.
With more than 25 years of leadership experience at Astrazeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly, and Baxter, Bedi brings both gravitas and grit to the new role. At Astrazeneca India, he steered a turnaround that doubled market growth and tripled market capitalisation to $1 billion, while also contributing to India’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout.
Bedi has been actively involved in India’s startup ecosystem, leading healthcare innovation partnerships with IIT Kanpur and the India-Sweden Healthcare Innovation Centre, alongside early-stage bets in Healthtech startups focused on coronary and oncology care.
“Smile Group’s strong track record in scaling impactful, tech-forward ventures across Asia is something I’ve always deeply respected”, said Bedi. “Their unique approach—combining capital with deep operational support—resonates strongly with my focus on partnering with mission-driven startup founders”.
Smile Group founder & CEO Harish Bahl added, “With AI in healthcare becoming a $50B+ opportunity across APAC, and India’s market growing at 42 per cent annually, the pace of change in Healthtech is phenomenal. Gagandeep’s rare combination of corporate leadership and Healthtech experience makes him the ideal fit”.
The venture builder will focus on co-creating disruptive Healthtech businesses across Asia by combining Smile’s capital firepower and founder-first model with Bedi’s domain expertise and deep ecosystem connects.
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.
