Sun Pharma’s #SecondBirthDate campaign returns with Shreyas Iyer

MUMBAI: A ruptured spleen on a Sydney pitch could have ended a career; instead it has become the centrepiece of Sun Pharma’s latest doctor-worship drive. The pharmaceutical giant has roped in Shreyas Iyer, India’s T20I captain, for the next instalment of #SecondBirthDate, its flagship National Doctors’ Day campaign that turns patients into walking thank-you notes for the medics who patched them up.

Iyer’s inclusion is no marketing stretch. The batter suffered a life-threatening injury during a match against Australia in 2025, a fall that left him with a broken spleen and internal bleeding severe enough to land him under critical care before doctors in India stabilised him and steered him back to fitness. Iyer called the ordeal a reminder of how fast life can turn, crediting the medical teams who nursed him back to the sport he loves and framing the campaign as his tribute to the people who engineered his comeback.

Kirti Ganorkar, managing director at Sun Pharma, cast the initiative as Sun Pharma’s way of repaying doctors for the reassurance and healing they deliver in patients’ darkest moments, with Iyer’s story serving as this year’s headline act. The campaign is no newcomer to celebrity recovery tales, having previously featured cricketer Rishabh Pant, actors Sushmita Sen and Mahima Chaudhry, and paralympian Sumit Antil among its cast of grateful survivors.

This year’s edition leans hard into amplification: a high-impact film running across digital and social platforms, recovery stories from influencers including Remo D’Souza, and a fresh wave of outdoor and print visibility designed to make sure no commuter escapes the message. The public can join in too, with secondbirthdate.com inviting anyone to design and send their own doctor a personalised thank-you card.

For Sun Pharma, India’s largest pharmaceutical company by AIOCD AWACS data, the campaign is as much brand equity as bedside gratitude, a reminder that goodwill, like good medicine, compounds. Iyer is back at the crease; Sun Pharma, evidently, never left the dressing room.