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Y&H designs a path to victory at Goafest in design specialist category
GOA: Day two of Goafest 2025 witnessed Y&H putting pen to paper and coming up with a masterpiece performance in the design specialist category, proving that sometimes good design really is worth a thousand words—or in this case, 52 points.
The agency crafted its way to the ‘design specialist agency of the year’ title with three silvers, eight bronzes and a merit, a portfolio so impressive it left rivals wondering if they’d been using crayons whilst Y&H wielded proper brushes.
Famous Innovations managed to sketch out second place with 44 points courtesy of four silvers and five bronzes—a performance that was undeniably famous, though perhaps not quite innovative enough to topple the leader. Open Strategy & Design rounded out the podium with 30 points from two silvers, four bronzes and a merit, proving that being open about your strategy sometimes pays dividends.
McCann Worldgroup India managed a respectable 18 points with one silver, two bronzes and two merits, whilst Tribes Communication grabbed 16 points through four bronzes—the sort of consistent bronze-winning that suggests they’ve mastered the art of being consistently third-best.
The middle tier was awash with agencies earning their design stripes. Tree Design, EbbXFlo, and Havas Worldwide India each managed eight points. Tree Design and EbbXFlo both secured two bronzes apiece, whilst Havas opted for one silver and one merit—different strokes for different folks, as they say in the design world.
Leo India managed six points with three merits. Meanwhile, tgthr., Grey Group, Enormous, CCL Products (India) and Brave all clustered at four points each.
Innocean Worldwide Communication brought up the rear with two points from a single merit.
The Abby Creative Awards 2025, powered by The One Show, continued their methodical categorisation of creative excellence, with broadcaster, PR, mobile specialist, technology specialist, and direct specialist awards ensuring every possible advertising discipline gets its moment to shine.
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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.
