MAM
upGrad India onboards Abdul Wajid Shaikh as head of performance marketing
Mumbai: Edtech major upGrad on Friday announced the appointment of Abdul Wajid Shaikh as head of performance marketing for India.
In his new role, Shaikh will be driving end-to-end performance marketing across digital platforms. He will also work towards streamlining and automation of the entire performance marketing processes to facilitate profitability, said the company in a statement.
Welcoming Shaikh on board, upGrad CEO-India, Arjun Mohan said, “We are thrilled to have yet another LifeLong learner, Abdul who joins the upGrad family. Aligned with our vision, he brings with him deep domain expertise, given his decade-long experience with other digital brands. I am confident that Abdul joining our dynamic performance marketing vertical will help us scale newer heights while staying true to our vision and core beliefs.”
Shaikh comes with more than a decade of experience in the digital marketing industry. He has had stints with brands like WhiteHat Jr, Flipkart, Viu OTT, InMobi, Mobiclicks.
Talking about his new role, Shaikh shared, “Being part of upGrad is going to be an exciting new phase for me. The edtech space is booming with potential and prospects waiting to be explored. And upGrad is at the cusp of new possibilities and opportunities. I resonate with upGrad as a brand and its philosophy of Lifelong Learning. While I am enthused to bring all my experience and expertise to bolster upGrad’s presence, I am also excited about picking up new skills along this journey.”
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.
