MAM
Vyas Giannetti to revamp CAG Shield Cricket Tournament
MUMBAI: The Communication Arts Guild (CAG) Shield a cricket tournament of the Indian advertising and media industry will now be repackaged and revamped by Vyas Giannetti Creative Sports (VGCS).
The CAG Shield cricket tournament was started twenty years ago with a sole aim of bringing together the advertising and media fraternity through sports.
VGCS business head Anand Yalvigi says, “The main challenge we envisage now is to ensure the younger generation not only uphold the spirit of the tournament but carry on the traditions of the CAG Shield for generations to come, VGCS is all set to take the CAG Shield to the next level by making it the World Cup of advertising”.
The CAG Shield is a 45-day annual cricket tournament starting today 3 February 2007. The league matches will be held at select venues every Saturday in Mumbai. This will be followed by quarter-finals and semi-finals. The finals will be followed by a glittering prize distribution ceremony attended by the luminaries of the industry.
VGCS says that for many the CAG Shield is not just a tournament but a tradition in itself. It has become a platform to fulfill their secret desire of the cricketer inside them.
O&M executive chairman and national creative director Piyush Pandey says, “CAG Shield Cricket Tournament has over the years been a tremendous meeting ground for the advertising fraternity. Fortunately, it is the only tournament for advertising agencies and there is no complication of the industry being divided as in the award shows. It’s healthy, competitive and yet loads of fun. I have played it for years and have wonderful memories from many a good match”.
16 teams will participate in the tournament. They include O&M, Group M, Lowe, Percept Advertising and Ad factors.
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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.
