MAM
The Mumbai Marathon lures media professionals
MUMBAI: The 2014 edition of the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon drew media professionals like a fish to water. A whole bunch of executive right from broadcast to media agencies to marketers to advertising professionals donned their sports shoes, and pinned their numbers to their T-shirts, and pounded the streets as they joined 40,000 other runners to test either the Dream Run, the half marathon or the entire distance.
Among those who woke themselves early on 19 January included: Meenakshi Menon (she and 10 others ran for an NGO Vanashakti), Suki Dusanj, Times Television Network CEO Sunil Lulla, former Indiagames CEO Vishal Gondal, Mindshare’s Jai Lala, Vizeum India head S. Yesudas, Sahara group’s Kailashnath Koppikar, Sapna Bhavnani, MindShare’s Rajit Desai, Sony Entertainment’s Deep Drona, Star India’s Kevin Vaz, Lashmi Narasimham, Bharat Kapadia, Mindshare’s Amin Lakhani, Paritosh Joshi, HDFC Life’s marketing head Sanjay Tripathy, CNBC TV18 marketing head Suranjana Ghosh Aikara.
Some of them ran for charity; some to challenge themselves. Their facebook accounts and twitter posts were replete with their individual experiences and how they bettered their previous best times. Or how they braved aches and pains to complete the course they had set for themselves.
Rajit Desai completed his first half marathon in 2 hours 47 minutes, a feat which he felt was not spectacular, but “satisfying for a debut.” Jain Lala wore the number 34377 on his jersey and had all his colleagues and friends going ga-ga over him. Sony’s Deep Drona ran his half marathon in 2 hours 4 minutes and 9 seconds. Said he: “Bettered last year by 2 mins. Great result compared to the work put in this year.”
Viacom18 Pictures Ajit Andhare ran with his friends from the times of his GE days and also to promote the studios upcoming Abhay Deol film. Yesudas hit the asphalt for the half marathon, adding to the tally of long distance races he has participated in. Entertainment Network India Ltd (ENIL – Radio Mirchi) CEO Prashant Panday completed his half marathon in 1 hour 53 minutes, which is by all standards a good time for a non-professional runner.
Media industry veteran and now marketing consultant Bharat Kapadia says he ran his seventh consecutive half marathon and completed it in 2 hours 17 minutes.
Viacom18 Media group CEO Sudhanshu Vats, on his part, ran the full marathon in a classy time of just under four hours.
Times TV’s Sunil Lulla did well too. Said he: ” Mumbai Half Marathon, 2014. My first and I am grateful to complete it in. 1 hr: 54 mins: 29 sec , ranking 650 overall and 78 in Veteran. I pledged a healthy sum of money to CMCA, and am glad I could deliver on my promise. Thank You.”
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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.
