MAM
Zee appoints Scarecrow for its food channel Khana Khazana
MUMBAI: Zee Entertainment Limited has appointed Scarecrow Communications as the creative agency for Khana Khazana, its 24×7 food channel. The account will be handled out of Scarecrow‘s Mumbai office. The win came after a systematic pitch process, involving the top agencies in the country.
The new creative campaign for Zee Khana Khazana is based on a powerful insight and will serve as a platform to showcase the exciting line up of new shows, thereby continuing the tradition of creating people-centric content by the Zee family which is appreciated across genres.
Says Raghu Bhat- Founder Director, Scarecrow Communications, “We are thrilled to partner Zee in this new journey of capturing Indian stomachs and eventually, their hearts.”
Says Joy Sengupta, Founder Director, Scarecrow Communications, “Our association with the Zee group is not new. But it‘s highly satisfying to bag one more prestigious mandate from the pioneers of Indian TV entertainment space.”
Says Manish Bhatt, Founder Director, Scarecrow Communications, “Zee is Indian by heart, Indian by nature and Indian by actions. We hope to use our instinct and knowledge of the Indian pulse to create a distinct positioning for Khana Khazana.”
With fully functional offices in Mumbai and Delhi, Scarecrow Communications is India‘s one of the fastest growing advertising agencies with brands such as Danone Narang, Reliance Digital, Anchor Panasonic, Future Capital, Emami, Religare, Eristoff, Kohinoor McCormick, Viacom 18, Quikr, Rupa and DLF. Recently, Scarecrow started its full fledged design outfit, Scarecrow Designs.
Zee Khana Khazana which pioneered the cookery show content in India is all set to build on its legacy with a slew of highly exciting and original new shows, targeting Sec A, B housewives across India.
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.
