MAM
Yamaha ropes in Deepika Padukone as ambassador for scooter range
MUMBAI: Yamaha has appointed Deepika Padukone as the brand ambassador of its scooter range – Ray – in India.
John Abraham will continue to be the brand ambassador of the company‘s bikes range.
This is Padukone‘s first endorsement for an automobile brand. She will feature in the commercials of the brand that are targeted towards females, primarily below 24 years of age.
Yamaha Motor CEO and MD Hiroyuki Suzuki said, “We are very pleased with our alliance with Deepika Padukone to endorse our scooter ‘Ray‘, which just like Deepika, signifies ‘Cool and Beauty‘. Being young, fit, sporty and stylish, Deepika has all the elements that our customers will subscribe to when they buy our scooters.”
The company hopes that Abraham and Padukone will collectively add strength to the product line up of Yamaha and take the brand to new heights in the times to come.
The development is in line with the company‘s effort to strengthen its brand particularly in the scooter market. The company will continue with the Yes! Yamaha campaign which was introduced a couple of years ago. As part of the Yes! Yamaha campaign, many initiatives have been launched including ‘Bring back the Joy‘ campaign and ‘Chabi Ghumao, Bike Le jao‘ contest (Turn the key, win a bike contest).
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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.
