Ad Campaigns
Cleartax launches new ITR filing ad campaign featuring Gulshan Grover
Mumbai: Cleartax, India’s income tax return filing platform, has launched a new campaign featuring Bollywood actor Gulshan Grover. The campaign captures the fear and anxiety that many people face while filing their personal taxes, and how Cleartax can help them overcome it with its easy and hassle-free solutions.
The campaign film shows Grover as the OG Badman who personifies the fear of ITR filing that people feel when tax season approaches. However, he is left baffled when he finds a young user who seems to be completely at ease, since he has already filed his taxes using Cleartax.
Tax filing is an onerous task for many. Many people struggle with which ITR form to choose, which regime works best for them, which supporting documents to look at and which schedules to fill in their ITR. This campaign effectively communicates how by using Cleartax such fears can be easily overcome.
Clear founder & CEO Archit Gupta said, “Cleartax has been super simplifying tax filing for a decade. We understand the emotions at play and have brought in many features to quell the fear of tax filing. With multiple income streams opening up for users such as crypto, e-gaming, F&O, domestic and foreign capital gains, complex business returns – the perceived complications with filing taxes have multiplied. Through this campaign, we want to show taxpayers that Cleartax is here to take care of all their tax-related worries and make their lives easier.”
Sunny Side Up creative director Anand Krishnan said, “If our relationship with money is complicated, with taxes, it is downright dreadful. There is a swirl of emotions one goes through when you hear the word tax – and fear is the most dominant one. The campaign is a quirky take on a serious topic, and the idea is to make the Cleartax user feel exactly how one is supposed to – a simple process that you get done with quickly.”
“Who isn’t scared of taxes? And who better to scare the audience than the bad man? It was a perfect match, I loved the script and thought it was tailor made for my screen persona. Later I found out that it was written specifically for me. It was an exciting project to be a part of,” said Grover.
The integrated campaign will span digital, audio and social with digital partnerships.
Cleartax’s ITR filing product has data pre-fill, autofetch of transactions and auto computation for capital gains including loss set off and carry forward, cryptocurrency related reporting and tax filing. It can take care of every possible filing scenario. Cleartax’s engine automatically suggests to the user which tax regime is beneficial for them. Cleartax has simplified complex tax terminology and uncovers tax tips for the users to optimise their taxes. Users can complete their entire income tax filing process on ClearTax including filing, verification, return status check, refund status check etc.
NATIONAL: Amazon Ads has laid out a sharply tech-led vision for the advertising industry in 2026, arguing that artificial intelligence, streaming TV and creator partnerships will combine to turn brand building into a more precise, performance-driven business.
At the heart of the shift, the company says, is the fusion of AI with Amazon’s vast trove of shopping, browsing and streaming signals, allowing advertisers to move beyond blunt reach metrics to campaigns designed around real customer behaviour.
“The future of advertising is not about reaching more people, but the right people with messages that resonate,” said Amazon Ads India head and vice president Girish Prabhu. “By combining AI with deep customer insights, we help brands move from broadcasting campaigns to having meaningful conversations wherever audiences spend their time.”
One of the biggest changes, according to Amazon Ads, will be the collapse of the wall between media planning and creative development. Retail media, powered by first-party data, is increasingly shaping everything from brand discovery to final purchase, pushing marketers to design campaigns around audience insight rather than internal instinct.
AI is also moving from a support tool to a creative engine. Agentic AI, which automates and accelerates production, is expected to make high-quality creative accessible even to small businesses, compressing weeks of work into hours and giving challengers the ability to compete with larger brands on speed and scale.
Behind the scenes, AI-driven analytics will take on a bigger role in campaign optimisation, identifying patterns, spotting opportunities and recommending actions that would previously have required teams of analysts.
Streaming TV is another big battleground. With India’s video streaming audience now above 600 million and connected TV users at 129.2 million in 2025, advertisers are set to treat streaming not just as a branding channel but as a performance engine, measured increasingly by sales, sign-ups and bookings rather than just reach.
Finally, Amazon Ads sees creators and contextual advertising reshaping how brands tell stories. Creators will act less like influencers and more like long-term partners, while scene-aware ads on streaming platforms will allow brands to insert hyper-relevant offers into the flow of what viewers are watching.
Taken together, Amazon Ads argues, these shifts mark a move towards advertising that is both more human and more measurable, where AI handles the complexity, and creativity does the persuading.
