MAM
SoCheers bolsters leadership team with two key appointments
Mumbai: SoCheers, a digital-first full-service advertising agency, has appointed two new members to its leadership team with Jaideep Thackeray and Randal Gomes. They joined the ranks as creative head of design and head of business development, respectively.
“We have quite significantly grown in the past few years in terms of clients and people both. Therefore, we wanted to further strengthen and have some seasoned leaders to drive the teams,” stated SoCheers co-founder and CEO Mehul Gupta. “Interestingly, both the leaders tend to understand the evolution of digital and its acceptance in the years gone by as well as foresee its growth to come. I am confident that with such synchronised synergies, the agency will surely touch newer heights as we gear up to expand our client base to more markets as well as up the game with our existing brands.”
Thackeray comes with an array of creative experience with prominent agencies like JWT, Ogilvy, Contract Advertising, Rickshaw Communications, to name a few. In his professional career of around 12 years, he has worked with revered brands like Shoppers Stop, Asian Paints, Palladium, and High Street Phoenix.
In his new role, he will be responsible for developing and growing the internal design team, championing client pitches, and helping the agency chart a fresh and innovative way forward for upcoming projects. “Just like other aspects of digital marketing, design too is witnessing a constant evolution. Having the best design artwork and impactful brand message go hand in hand because the former enthralls the viewers with its aesthetics and the latter demonstrates the brand ethos. Having said that, this is the balance I always try to achieve with my work. For me, this is the perfect opportunity to grow as a creative professional, as SoCheers is on a growing curve, working with some of the biggest brands in the industry,” Thackeray said.
Gomes brings with him a decade worth of experience in the digital marketing industry. Before joining SoCheers, he led the strategy and business development team at MindShift Interactive where he played a crucial role in developing landmark and trending campaigns like #FeelingBlue (for Reliance 3G), and #ChappalMaaro (for The Bombay Store).
In his current role, he will be leading the business development vertical and will be responsible for growing the agency’s footprint by helping them acquire new clients. “The digital industry never ceases to amaze me. With the pandemic outbreak, the digital landscape has become even more revolutionized, having a plethora of brands test waters. Both the digital agencies as well as brands have acknowledged innovations in this space. Therefore, for me, SoCheers is definitely a new terrain of possibilities and I am super excited to have the agency expand its client roster,” commented Gomes.
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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.
