MAM
Yahoo! India announces strategic appointments
MUMBAI: After a profitable 2004, Yahoo! India has announced some strategic appointments, the first being of Vishal Maheshwari, who will head Yahoo! India Mobile.
Yahoo! India country manager Neville Taraporewalla also announced two new positions to lend strategic direction to Yahoo! India search and online media sales. Rishi Behal was promoted as director-strategic alliances and search, while Pearl Uppal will head the national sales function of Yahoo! India as sales director.
Announcing the new appointments, Taraporewalla said, “Yahoo! India has seen an aggressive growth rate in the last couple of years and this goes beyond just increase in online advertising revenues. Our mobile content business is also on the rise besides we see a great potential in the search business. The new appointments signify our continued investment in people, resources and technology in India and also throws light on Yahoo’s trust in local talent to power its business. The most crucial resource for Yahoo! is its people.”
Maheshwari, who has been appointed to provide renewed strategic direction to the mobile business, was formerly head of customer asset management at BPL Mobile Communications and will now use his expertise across various sectors like Telecom, Financial Services and FMCG industry to strengthen Yahoo! India’s Mobile business. He will report to Taraporewalla.
Seeing the growing potential of the search business in India, Behal, formerly regional manager- sales has been promoted to head the strategic alliances and search function for Yahoo! India. In his new position, Behal will be responsible for adapting search for Y! India and plan its road map for success in India like in many other countries. He would also specifically work with Yahoo! India’s long term alliance partners to ensure better strategic relationships as well as bringing in larger relationships in the field of health, travel and gaming besides other areas.
Uppal, on the other hand, will now spearhead the national sales function of the company as sales director and will be responsible for increasing the online advertising client base of Yahoo! India and maintaining Yahoo! India’s leadership space in the domain. Uppal will head the sales business unit which includes sales production and ad operations.
Both Behal and Uppal will report to Taraporewalla.
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.
