MAM
Wondrlab launches open tech platform WISR
MUMBAI: MarTech network Wondrlab has launched ‘WISR’. This is an open tech platform that connects brands and schools with the ambition to empower schools through brand partnerships.
Wondrlab said that it believes in the power of brands and ‘marketing for good’. WISR was created to fundamentally solve the problem of below-par teacher salaries and the poor state of infrastructure in schools. Brands have the power to solve this problem. Wondrlab believes that WISR has the potential to add 20 percent additional salary for teachers across every participating school.
WISR is a platform that creates additional revenue streams for schools. The opportunity is to help brands create unique opportunities to connect with 260 million students in more than 1.5 million schools across the country.
The segment presents an opportunity for brands. Kids have huge power and influence purchase decisions across many key categories. The pocket money of kids even in 2017 was 22000 crore and grew by 100 percent every five years (in fact the pocket money is more than the GDP of 52 countries).
The problem for marketers has always been a disorganised database. Seeking permissions has always been a manual and extremely cumbersome process. There has never been any ability to track and measure the effectiveness of communication initiatives.
WISR lets brands Identify schools: an intelligent algorithm selects the right schools based on the category, marketing objectives and budgets. The platform lets brands schedule, deploy and optimize campaigns at the click of a button.
WISR, at its launch, covers more than 1500 schools across 21 cities.It will onboard more than 50,000 schools over the next five years.
Wondrlab founder & CEO Saurabh Varma said, “Our schools need help. They need help to better teacher salaries, create better infrastructure and create superior experiences for students. Brands can play a constructive role in making this happen. India’s move towards a five trillion economy is conditional on a superior education. That is our power. It will be extremely satisfying if we can play a small role in making this dream a possibility.”
Wondrlab co-founder & managing partner Vandana Verma said, “Our aim with WISR is to do marketing for good. But we understand that this comes with its own set of challenges. As schools benefit from brand partnerships, they are also faced with a moral responsibility towards children with regard to the pieces of communication they interact with. So, to safeguard this, the platform has on-boarded a panel of educationalists, child psychologists, and a legal team of experts responsible for vetting all brand communication. As a team, they will ensure that all school guidelines and ethical advertising principles are being adhered to. The open platform will let all brands, media agencies and creative agencies participate across key verticals like sports, health hygiene and edutainment.”
Wondrlab CTO Siddhyesh Narkar said, “Building this platform in-house has been a thrilling and rewarding experience. Careful planning and a clear vision have helped us develop this platform into something impactful. WISR allows school and brands collaborations by successfully deploying technology, data, and robotization.”
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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.
