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Weekend Unwind with Bare Bones Collective’s Anuya Jakatdar
Mumbai: With another weekend upon us, it is time to unwind with the latest Q&A edition of Indiantelevision.com’s Weekend Unwind—a series of informal chats that peek into the minds of business executives through a fun lens in an attempt to get to know the person behind the title a little better.
In this week’s session, we have Bare Bones Collective co-founder Anuya Jakatdar.
Jakatdar has over 13 years of experience as a journalist, creative/social media consultant, and screenwriter. She is a writer of both short and long-format content, with a flair for comedy. She has written tweets, posts, ads, sketches, funny songs, as well as scripts for both movies and TV shows.
Without further ado, here it goes…
Your mantra for life
Something Neil Gaiman said in a graduation speech that has since then become a North Star of sorts for me:
“Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art.” – Neil Gaiman
A book you are currently reading or plan to read
I’m reading Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, which is basically a very literary How I Met Your Father
Your fitness mantra, especially during the pandemic
My fitness mantra is “PUT DOWN THAT CHOCOLATE ANUYA”. It’s often not very effective.
Your comfort food
Sweet Corn Chicken Soup from a Chinese restaurant that makes extremely orange food
A quote or philosophy that keeps you going when the chips are down
Wow you guys love quotes and mantras huh. I guess the answer to this will be Just Keep Swimming by poet and thinker extraordinaire, Dory
Your guilty pleasure
Filet-O-Fish burger from McDonald’s. Something about the dry and tasteless nature of that fish patty just brings me back from the brink of any abyss.
The last time you tried something new
I watched a horror movie recently, for the first time ever.
A life lesson you learned the hard way
I don’t like horror movies
What gets you excited about life?
The fact that I don’t have to ever watch a horror movie again if I don’t want to. Yay, choice!
What’s on top of your bucket list?
Sampling the local cuisine of as many countries as possible.
If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be?
Don’t listen to your older self. She’s become damn boring and responsible.
One thing you would most like to change about the world
I’d like to change many things, but okay, if I have to pick one, I guess I’d like to banish acidity. It’s such a pesky little thing. Go away, acidity! Shoo!
An activity that keeps you motivated and charged during tough times
Sleeping. Nothing like pushing all the tough times to the next day.
What lifts your spirits when life gets you down?
Spirits
Your go-to stress buster
Reading. Always and forever.
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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.
