MAM
The Script Room completes three years; plans original web series
Mumbai: Ad agency The Script Room has completed three years and a hundred ad films. Founded by Rajesh Ramaswamy and Ayyappan Raj in 2019, the agency has been offering content strategies, script writing and production to support clients.
The Script Room bagged its first project in April 2019 for Netflix India, a campaign around one of its originals “Selection Day.” Nine films were shot in one night. The campaign won the fledgling company the ‘Best Digital Creative Award’ at Star Re-Imagine awards. Their second campaign with a series of ten ads titled ‘So, what are you watching?’ for Netflix went on air during the World Cup and was an Effie Finalist. Post that The Script Room has worked with brands like OYO, Chumbak, Vedantu, Bumble, PhonePe, Great Learning, CoinSwitch, My11Circle, RummyCircle, PaperBoat and many more. Many of the films are popular and have won prestigious awards like Kyoorius and Abbys.
The young bespoke advertising outfit is modelled as a writers’ room and has worked with a diverse portfolio of clients.
“Over the three years, we’ve managed to run a smart, clean, cheerful set-up,” said The Script Room co-founder Ayyappan Raj. “Maintain a good work-life balance, avoid being factory-fied, encourage individuals to pursue whatever they want personally, good food, good drinks, bad jokes… simple joys and general happiness. Thanks to every single person who’s helped us do this.”
“This year and the coming years we are going after two things, first is something that’s long overdue, developing our own The Script Room Original – a new web-series that’s in the final stages of writing. Second is creating a working model of writers room for advertising, where we engage with writers outside of TSR. This we piloted a few months back and it’s coming about quite well,” he added.
“Like what one expects from a good movie script, we wouldn’t want The Script Room journey, our plot line, to lag or meander. Anything and everything that we’re doing is to progress the story further, while adding depth and colour,” he further said.
“These three years has been quite a ride. Honestly, we hadn’t planned it out. In fact, we just decided to go with the flow,” said The Script Room co-founder Rajesh Ramaswamy. “We’ve met a lot of interesting people along the way. Enjoyed a lot of goodwill, faith and trust. A lot of friends cheered us along. A lot of clients embraced this model. Though we didn’t have a retainer model, they’ve been good enough to return. That’s encouraging. They’ve also been kind enough to spread a good word about us.”
Ramaswamy added, “We’ve been clear that we want to collaborate with as many interesting people as possible. So, we’ve worked with a lot of established directors, and also a lot of new young talent. We keep engaging and meeting all kinds of writers from all fields with different sensibilities. People have given us books to read that they are working on. Some just come and jam with us on a story idea. Some come and sing us songs or recite shayari. All just for love. With no great agenda. We love this process and would always want to keep that alive. That’s our only trip.”
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.
