MAM
You Nguyen is United Colors of Benetton’s creative director
MUMBAI: The Benetton Group has consolidated its management and creative structure with the appointment of You Nguyen, United Colors of Benetton’s new chief merchandising officer and creative director.
Nguyen will adopt an integrated merchandising strategy to deal with all aspects of the brand: from the collections to brand identity and including in-store architecture and mood. In this way, he will contribute to the evolution of an icon of Italian taste, based on colour, design, quality and a unique eye for detail.
Nguyen said, “I joined Benetton Group in order to contribute to an incredible brand like United Colors of Benetton, which operates in more than 120 countries. The brand’s future depends chiefly on its staying loyal to its identity, on its solidity and time-honoured ties with such values as design, architecture and innovation. I think my “foreign” sensitivity will help to see and interpret that future through new eyes so we present it to the world’s new generations with well-founded pride in the past and a renewed vision of the future”.
Benetton Group executive deputy chairman Alessandro Benetton said, “I am very pleased to welcome Mr Nguyen,” commented. “I believe his international experience will help us to write a new chapter in our story of innovation so we may continue to be prime movers in the economic and social geography of the upcoming decades – not least through a consistent integration of on-trend fashions and dependable quality and prices. We want Benetton to be an increasingly important part of the world we live in, which is why we devote body and soul to our job. We will do even better, that which we already do well”.
Nguyen joined Benetton from Levi Strauss in San Francisco, where he worked from 2003, becoming global senior VP of merchandising and design, for Levi’s Women in 2009.
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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.
