MAM
Venkat Mallik to head Tribal DDB India & RAPP
MUMBAI: DDB Mudra Group has handed over the responsibility of heading Tribal DDB India operations to Venkat Mallik. He will also continue to lead RAPP India.
Mallik comes in with nearly 20 years of experience. He joined RAPP in 2009 as their president India. Prior to this, he worked with companies like JWT, Leo Burnett, Euro RSCG and Unilever.
Mudra Group CEO & MD Madhukar Kamath said, “With around a 100 million Internet users, digital advertising is acquiring mainstream proportions and it is important to create a leadership structure for Tribal DDB which understands both digital and mainstream brand marketing communications well. With his background in advertising, brand marketing, online gaming and data and digital communication, Venkat brings a combination of skills needed to build Tribal DDB, as well as RAPP at this juncture.”
Mallik‘s brand experience spans 50 different brands and categories, including leading brands from companies like Unilever, SmithKline Beecham, ITC, Indian Oil, Ultratech, Sara Lee, Van Melle, CavinKare, Standard Chartered Bank, HDFC, Tata Communications and HP.
On his new role, Mallik said, “It’s exciting to have the mandate to grow RAPP and Tribal DDB, both of which are leading global new age agencies. We are looking to scale up both agencies quickly while leveraging synergies between them.”
Tribal DDB India has a client list that include Idea Cellular, Star TV, McDonald’s, Tourism Australia and Emirates. RAPP handles clients like Hewlett Packard, Standard Chartered Bank, Johnson & Johnson and Tata Communications.
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.
