Brands
Guest Column: The role of digital marketing in achieving better ROI during festive seasons
When it comes to the world of marketing and advertising, festivals provide a unique opportunity to reach a wide audience with an almost singular emotion- “celebration”. And while in western markets, this peak season is predominantly during Christmas, it is a completely different ball game in India. From Diwali and Dusshera to Holi, Eid and Christmas, festivals and their corresponding festivities and celebrations abound through the year. This creates an interesting opportunity for marketers to drive engagement and sales through several periods of the year, while also keeping an eye on brand building.
In the pre-digital era, this indicated large sweeping mainline campaigns that aimed at targeting as wide an audience as possible. However, this strategy often hit a speedbump because being part of a diverse country such as this, the celebrations and cultures associated with each festival vary from region to region. And that is the issue that the digital space has resolved for brands as well as marketers. Instead of just one blanket campaign, we are finally able to customise and channel the right message to the right individual.
This is especially important when you consider that festivals are more about pushing for sales rather than mere brand building. Take the recent Big Billion Day Sale campaign by Flipkart, with a plethora of influencers and creatives that generated every aspect of every point of sale was covered across regions and demographics. Although not around a specific festival, the ‘festive season’ as it is popularly known to be allows us to widen the reach of this messaging further, and the fact that it is not a singular creative asset-led campaign helps maintain freshness in the content.
Now combine this with strong consumer data and deeper insights on culture, and what you have is the opportunity to build messaging basis a prevalent conversation or sentiment online. And by mapping these two well with nimble content creation capabilities where assets are created, not in weeks or months, but a few days and at times even hours, one can deliver creative assets that engage consumers while not only providing value, but also propagating the brand’s values.
What this understanding of culture also does is to help brands focus on deep consumer insights about what a festival truly means to people today. An interesting case in point was Netflix’s film around the worry everyone has with respect to gifting during festivals,which led to a widely enjoyable creative that had its sentiment analysis spot-on, generating a smile across everyone’s face.
The above example also showcases that the era of wider reaching creatives isn’t over.In fact, while the digital space allows us to hyper target and create content that is well aimed, it also allows us to not lose what the larger message of the brand is. This is because when the avenues to propagate a message increase and the data allows one to target, then you can both, deliver a wider message for brand building along with smaller, more targeted content for sales. In other words, the digital platform allows you to have your cake and eat it too.
Brands
Jio Financial Services posts Rs 1,560 crore FY26 profit
Revenue rises to Rs 3,513 crore as investments and lending scale up.
MUMBAI: If money makes the world go round, Jio Financial Services Limited is quietly spinning a much bigger wheel. The Reliance-backed financial arm reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 1,560.9 crore for FY26, slightly lower than Rs 1,612.6 crore in FY25, even as revenue growth gathered pace.
Total revenue from operations rose sharply to Rs 3,513.3 crore in FY26 from Rs 2,042.9 crore a year earlier, driven largely by a surge in interest income, which more than doubled to Rs 1,901.9 crore from Rs 852.5 crore. Fee and commission income also saw a significant jump to Rs 597 crore, compared to Rs 155.2 crore in FY25, reflecting expanding financial services activity.
For the March quarter, profit stood at Rs 272.2 crore, broadly flat compared to Rs 269 crore in the same period last year. Quarterly revenue from operations climbed to Rs 1,018.5 crore, up from Rs 493.2 crore year-on-year, signalling steady momentum in core income streams.
Expenses, however, moved in tandem with growth. Total costs nearly quadrupled to Rs 1,982.9 crore in FY26 from Rs 524.8 crore in FY25, with finance costs alone rising to Rs 745.1 crore from just Rs 7.7 crore a year earlier, reflecting increased borrowing and scale of operations. Employee expenses also grew to Rs 387.3 crore, while other expenses expanded to Rs 755 crore.
Profit before tax stood at Rs 1,911.7 crore for the year, slightly below Rs 1,946.9 crore in FY25. After accounting for a total tax outgo of Rs 350.8 crore, the company reported its final net profit figure.
Beyond the income statement, the balance sheet tells a story of rapid expansion. Total assets surged to Rs 1,63,497 crore as of March 31, 2026, up from Rs 1,33,510 crore a year earlier. Investments alone stood at Rs 1,33,088.7 crore, underscoring the company’s strong focus on treasury and financial asset growth.
However, the year also saw sharp volatility in other comprehensive income, which swung to a loss of Rs 16,028.3 crore, largely driven by fair value changes in equity instruments. This dragged total comprehensive income for FY26 to a negative Rs 15,756.1 crore, compared to a positive Rs 14,870 crore in FY25.
On the capital front, the company’s paid-up equity share capital remained steady at Rs 6,353.1 crore, with other equity rising to Rs 1,27,500.5 crore.
The numbers reflect a business in transition scaling rapidly across lending, investments and fee-based services, but also navigating the volatility that comes with mark-to-market movements in financial assets. In other words, while the top line is accelerating, the fine print still carries a few swings.
