MAM
Air India Express partners Procam races, debuts Runner’s Passport
Airline ties up across races with 20 per cent flight discounts and travel perks.
MUMBAI: For runners chasing finish lines, the journey just got wings. Air India Express has joined hands with Procam International as the Official Airline Partner for all its races, kicking off with the TCS World 10K Bengaluru 2026. The partnership goes beyond race-day branding, focusing instead on the full runner experience from booking flights to crossing the finish line. At its core is a new ‘Runner’s Passport’ initiative, a travel-meets-fitness concept designed to turn each race into a collectible journey.
Participants will receive a specially designed passport at the event Expo, which doubles up as a season-long keepsake. Each completed race earns a unique stamp different for every distance with Bengaluru’s World 10K featuring a signature colour mark. Over time, the passport builds into a personalised record of runs, cities and milestones.
The airline is also offering up to 20 per cent discounts on flights under the “Run Bengaluru, Fly Xpress” proposition, tying travel directly into participation. On race day, runners will have access to baggage management services at the venue, removing a common logistical hurdle and allowing them to focus on performance.
The collaboration spans Procam’s marquee events across key running hubs including Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai cities that collectively draw participants from across India and overseas. The scale is significant, the Bengaluru race alone, a World Athletics Gold Label event, saw its Open 10K category sell out within seven days, underlining surging demand in India’s distance running circuit.
Operationally, Air India Express brings a wide network to the table, operating over 500 daily flights across 45 domestic and 17 international destinations with a fleet of more than 100 aircraft.
The tie-up reflects a growing trend in sports partnerships where brands are no longer just present at the finish line, but embedded across the entire journey. In this case, quite literally: from take-off to touchdown, and then to the final sprint.
Brands
Acko CMO Ashish Mishra to exit in July
The digital insurer’s marketing chief, who helped build the brand over nearly five years, is heading for the exit.
Ashish Mishra is stepping down as chief marketing officer of Acko, with his departure confirmed for July. He remains in the role for now, and an official announcement from the company is expected shortly.
Mishra joined the digital insurance start-up in August 2020, making him one of the longer-serving marketing chiefs in India’s fintech and insurtech space. Over nearly five years, he played a central role in building Acko’s brand presence in the country’s fiercely competitive digital insurance market. More recently, he was closely associated with Acko Life’s Unmixed brand philosophy, a proposition built around pure protection products stripped of the investment components that have long complicated traditional insurance offerings in India.
Before Acko, Mishra spent over a decade at HSBC in a series of marketing leadership roles spanning the Middle East, including regional marketing manager for credit cards and advance propositions, brand and media manager, and marketing manager for retail banking. Earlier in his career, he worked on the agency side, serving as senior brand service manager at Lowe Lintas and as executive for brand communications at DDB Mudra Group.
His exit leaves Acko with a sizeable gap to fill at a time when the brand is pushing deeper into life insurance and doubling down on its direct-to-consumer positioning. Whoever takes the seat next will inherit a brand that Mishra spent five years building from the ground up. That is not nothing.
