MAM
WWE gets thumbs up from Mumbaiites
MUMBAI: Wham! Bam! Choke slam! After six years the World Wrestling Entertainment came back to the city and boy did they get a reception. The fans mostly youngsters and kids cheered their heroes lustily while booing those they didn’t care for. The evening also saw Milestone Software release a WWE Raw Game which can be played on the PC.
The excitement was built up in no small way by the ring announcer Howard and also female wrestler Ivory who put in an appearance at the top of the show. A disappointment for many was that HHH due to a neck injury sustained at the recently concluded Survivor Series was unable to wrestle. Banter wise however Hunter was in fine form roaring “I drag my ass all the way from America to India and all you idiots can do is chant HBK”.
It was interesting to see matches, which had personality clashes. For example Christopher billed as the only wrestler from Harvard took on the street smart tough guy from Chicago D-Lo Brown. Christopher used some of that Ivy League intelligence!! to distract the referee and nail D-Lo with the book he always carries. As expected the crowd went wild when Bokker T unveiled his unique Spinnerooni move.
There also a couple of tag team matches as well as two occasions where most of the wrestlers were in the ring at the same time resembling Royal Rumble. One of the best matches was Test taking on the outrageous character Gold Dust. Test managed to wear him down with a combination of bear hugs and back breakers across the knee. No doubt in order to rile up the crowd Ric Flair while introducing HHH said that he was disappointed to leave America and come all the way over here.
On the flip side was the absence of a giant screen which would have allowed fans at the back to catch a clear glimpse of what was going on.
The event will air on Ten Sports next month as a WWE India Special.
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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.
