MAM
Taboola revs up India playbook, appoints Harpreet Singh to steer new ad-tech focus
MUMBAI: Taboola has turned the page on its India chapter, and it’s no longer just about native ads. With performance marketing in its crosshairs, the global content recommendation giant has appointed Harpreet Singh as its new country manager to lead its next wave of expansion in India.
Backed by strong momentum in the Indian market, Taboola has begun rewriting its growth script. Its February launch of ‘Realize’—a new performance-focused platform that moves beyond the confines of search and social—marked a strategic pivot. Built to deliver scalable outcomes for advertisers, Realize reflects the company’s ambition to dominate the evolving digital ad space.
To add muscle to this shift, Taboola recently inked a two-year exclusive partnership with JioNews, one of India’s leading news aggregators. The deal integrates Taboola’s content discovery suite across JioNews’ categories—from politics and business to lifestyle—giving advertisers enhanced reach to high-intent Indian audiences.
Singh now steps into the driver’s seat, tasked with leading Taboola’s India operations at a time when the company is aggressively pursuing performance advertising. With over 18 years in digital media, Singh has played an instrumental role in Taboola’s success in India and Southeast Asia. His work with publishers such as Times Internet, Network18, Jagran New Media, Hindustan Times, and Indian Express helped establish Taboola as a go-to monetisation partner.
“We are committed to evolving beyond native advertising and Harpreet’s leadership aligns perfectly with this shift,” a company representative said. “His track record makes him ideal to expand Realize’s potential and build stronger advertiser and publisher outcomes in India.”
The new leadership, combined with product innovation and strategic deals, signals Taboola’s aggressive expansion in one of its most promising markets. As Realize gains traction, all eyes will be on how Singh steers this next leg of growth.
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.
