MAM
Vaani Kapoor becomes the brand ambassador for Noise X-Fit 2 smartwatch
Mumbai: Noise announced that it has onboarded Bollywood actor Vaani Kapoor as the face of its upcoming X-Fit series smartwatches in India and is all set to launch the X-Fit 2 smartwatch in India on 4 August.
The X-Fit series by Noise was announced last year in partnership with HRX by Hrithik Roshan and Exceed Entertainment.
The brand has unveiled Vaani as the face of the X-Fit 2 with the release of the #KeepGoing campaign across its digital assets. With this development, Noise aims to initiate conversation around how fitness has become a part of our everyday lifestyle and we must pursue it in style and with comfort.
Vani Kapoor will start the Noise #KeepGoing campaign with a fitness challenge, asking the audience to share “What keeps them going” through social media posts.
Speaking about the campaign, Noise co-founder Amit Khatri said, “Our partnership with HRX has led to the launch of one of the most celebrated series in our smartwatch segment – X-Fit, designed for the athleisure-loving community who seek innovation bundled with style. We are all set to introduce the new X-Fit 2 smartwatch in India and are delighted to collaborate with Vaani Kapoor as the face of this new-age smartwatch. Vaani’s zeal for fitness and deep connection with Indian youths, millennials and Gen Z consumers will enable us to inspire a larger community and drive the adoption of smart innovations among them.”
Commenting on the partnership, Kapoor commented, “It is a pleasure to be a part of the journey with Noise and HRX to launch their upcoming X-Fit 2 smartwatch in India. The new smartwatch combines my fondness for gadgets with my passion for leading a fit lifestyle, and what inspires me even more is the brand’s message to always follow our instincts and believe in ourselves to mark a change.”
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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.
