Brands
Royal Challenge Sports Drink Bold League returns with season 2
MUMBAI: The second edition of Royal Challenge Sports Drink Bold League is back with its unique platform for cricket lovers that promises to be bigger, better and bolder. It has launched a series of short films featuring brand ambassador and RCB skipper Virat Kohli, who can be seen challenging cricketers across the nation to play against his team—“Ab Khel Ke Dikha”.
The league, which made its debut in February this year, in 10 cities, is now expanding to host teams in over 30 cities and towns to battle it out and win a chance to be pitted against the Royal Challengers Bangalore team. A slew of social media stars like Sumeet Vyas, Nidhi Singh, and others from one of India’s leading digital platform TVF Play would be performing at each of the state finals. This will culminate with arena-style performances by musicians including Amit Trivedi, Badshah, Diljit Dosanjh, and Sreeram live in action.
Talking about the campaign, Diageo India executive vice president and portfolio head—marketing Amarpreet Singh Anand said, “After a successful season 1, we’re thrilled to be back bolder than ever, spanning over 30 cities & towns. While season 1 was pegged on the war cry of cricketers across India challenging RCB, season 2 has Virat responding with a challenging ‘Ab Khel Ke Dikha!’ This season will continue to hold the original thought of bringing to life the brand’s premise of inspiring millennials to make bold moves in life, via a unique experiential platform”
Brands
Rakesh Menon joins Paytm as avp – lending
Fintech product leader takes on new role after building digital lending, payments and credit products across fintech ecosystem
MUMBAI: Rakesh Menon has joined Paytm as assistant vice president – lending, taking on a new role focused on strengthening the company’s lending and credit products.
Prior to this, Menon worked at Profectus Capital Pvt Ltd as chief manager – payments based financing and digital lending.
At Profectus, he designed and launched digital credit products for merchants with variable cash flows, including overdraft-linked and revenue-share lending models. He led end-to-end LOS–LMS API integrations with payment partners and aggregators, enabling real-time underwriting, disbursal and repayment workflows.
He also worked on funnel optimisation initiatives using journey analytics, improving onboarding, KYC and disbursal conversion by 35 per cent. He developed ecosystem partnerships for transaction-data-based credit assessment and automated settlement systems, and collaborated with credit and data science teams to strengthen risk models and early delinquency detection.
Menon standardised partner onboarding and API frameworks, reducing go-live timelines by 40 per cent and improving digital scalability.
Before Profectus Capital, he worked at PayU as senior manager – presales lead – enterprise business from August 2022 to August 2023. He set up a national presales function for fintech and digital commerce clients, aligning solutions such as EMI, BNPL, BBPS and offer engines to merchant requirements.
He also helped improve conversion rates by around 15 per cent through merchant persona mapping, demo frameworks and structured sales playbooks, working closely with product and go-to-market teams.
From April 2019 to July 2022, Menon served as business unit head – SMB – direct acquisitions at Worldline, where he built the SMB online payments vertical from scratch. The business scaled to Rs 2,500 crore in annual transaction volume, growing at 45 per cent year-on-year.
During this period, he introduced paperless onboarding processes including eKYC and eSign, developed partner dashboards and CRM automation systems, and integrated platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce and Tally to expand merchant adoption.
Across roles, Menon has worked across digital lending, payments and merchant financing, with experience in product development, ecosystem partnerships, API integrations and fintech-led growth strategies.
At Paytm, he will focus on scaling lending products and strengthening digital credit infrastructure within the company’s financial services ecosystem.
His appointment comes as fintech firms continue to expand their lending and embedded finance offerings in a competitive market.
