Hindi
Pepsico renews strategic partnership with PVR
MUMBAI: PepsiCo India, the leading food and beverage company, has renewed its strategic partnership with multiplex major PVR Limited.
As part of this 5-year partnership, PepsiCo India will be the official ‘Pouring Partner‘ for carbonated soft drinks, health drinks, juice based drinks, beverages, packaged juices and water at all the 166 PVR screens spread in over 22 cities across India.
With this, PepsiCo India intends to strengthen its position as a food and beverage player in the organised multiplex category.
PVR Ltd chairman and managing director Ajay Bijli said, “The 15 years of association with PepsiCo have been truly fruitful and we aim to take it to the next level by announcing PepsiCo as official ‘pouring partner‘ for carbonated beverages, packaged juices and water at all our outlets across India. The range of beverages that PepsiCo offers is vast and at the same time it is popular amongst the movie aficionados. With popularity of the brand across target audiences, we see this partnership as a long and successful one.”
The two parties had launched integrated marketing programmes around the likes of the 2011 Cricket World Cup and the recent Change the Game campaign.
The partnership also pioneered the Pepsi + Popcorn combo for cinema-goers with its own separate communication developed by the brands. The partnership will help strengthen PepsiCo India‘s efforts in garnering consumer insights, feedback and trials for new product development and engagement ideas, the company said.
PepsiCo India CEO – Beverages Praveen Someshwar said, “Our association with PVR has only grown manifold over the last 15 years. With more than 25 million footfalls in 2011-12 and an increasing pan India presence, this association further consolidates our presence across the organized multiplex category. PVR is a valued strategic partner and will play a pivotal role in building scale, visibility and greater consumer engagement opportunities for our beverage brands. We look forward to working with PVR to help the combine, garner an increasing revenue share of the category over the next five years.”
Beverages from PepsiCo India include brands like Pepsi, Mirinda, Mountain Dew, 7UP, Nimbooz Masala Soda, Lehar Evervess Soda, Slice, Gatorade and Aquafina.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
