MAM
Yannick Colaco to step down after six years as managing director of NBA india
MUMBAI: Yannick Colaco will step down as Vice President and Managing Director of NBA India, it was announced today by NBA Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer Mark Tatum.
Colaco has been in his current role since February 2013. NBA Vice President of Global Business Operations Diane Gotua will relocate from New York to the NBA’s Mumbai office to lead the business in India on an interim basis and oversee the search for a new Managing Director of the NBA in India.
“The NBA’s popularity and business in India have seen significant growth under Yannick’s leadership over the past six years,” said Tatum. “We thank Yannick for his contributions during his tenure as Managing Director and are grateful to have Diane assist with the transition.”
“I am extremely thankful to have played a part in the growth of the NBA in India,” Colaco said. “From broadening the distribution of our games to our plan to bring the live game experience to fans, the NBA’s business in India has never been better. It has been incredible living and breathing the NBA everyday over the past six years, and I look forward to applying my NBA experience as I move onto my next professional challenge.”
Colaco helped spearhead the growth for the NBA in India, expanding the distribution of NBA games to more than 350 live NBA games each season on SONY TEN 1, SONY TEN 3 and SONY ESPN, including 78 games with Hindi commentary and the introduction of live games that air primetime in India. Colaco led the NBA’s retail presence in India, with NBA merchandise now available at more than 750 retail stores nationwide and through NBAStore.in. Colaco was also responsible for partnering with Dream11 to launch the official NBA daily fantasy game, which is projected to have more than 1.5 million registered active users by the end of the season.
During Colaco’s tenure, he was influential in the formation of the NBA’s partnership with the Reliance Foundation in 2013, which has reached more than 10 million youth from 10,000 schools and trained more than 10,000 physical education instructors nationwide through the Reliance Foundation Jr. NBA program.
Additionally, Colaco oversaw the launch of The NBA Academy India, an elite basketball training center in Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) for top male and female prospects from throughout India and first of its kind in the country, and the NBA Basketball Schools, a network of tuition-based basketball development programs open to male and female players ages 6-18.
Most recently, Colaco was instrumental for the plan to bring the live NBA experience to fans in India with the NBA India Games 2019, two preseason games scheduled to take place in Mumbai this October featuring the Indiana Pacers and the Sacramento Kings. The NBA India Games 2019 will mark the first games the NBA has played in India and the first games staged in the country by a North American sports league.
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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.
