Broadband
Zoff Foods extends Shilpa Shetty partnership into ninth year
Spice brand reinforces trust-led positioning amid growth and funding push.
MUMBAI: Nine years, one flavour and the recipe clearly still works. Zoff Foods has extended its long-running association with Shilpa Shetty, marking nine consecutive years of her as brand ambassador as the company scales its presence across Indian households. What began as a digital-first collaboration has gradually evolved into a defining element of the brand’s identity. Over nearly a decade, the partnership has mirrored Zoff’s own journey from an emerging challenger to a fast-growing FMCG player with a widening footprint across e-commerce, quick commerce and offline retail channels.
The logic behind the continuity is straightforward. In a category where trust and familiarity drive purchase decisions, particularly in spices and ready-to-cook segments, long-term associations tend to carry more weight than short bursts of visibility. Shetty’s positioning as a fitness-conscious, health-aware public figure aligns with the brand’s emphasis on purity and quality factors that are increasingly shaping consumer choices in modern Indian kitchens.
The extension also comes at a time when Zoff Foods is entering a more aggressive growth phase. The company recently raised $2 million in a Pre-Series B funding round led by JM Financial Private Equity, with participation from Aman Gupta, signalling a push towards expanding distribution, product innovation and market reach.
Company executives have positioned the continued partnership as a strategic anchor amid this expansion, reinforcing brand recall while entering new markets. For Shetty, the association remains rooted in shared values around authenticity and ingredient integrity attributes that resonate strongly with increasingly mindful consumers.
In a market crowded with new-age brands and shifting loyalties, Zoff’s approach suggests a different playbook: build slowly, stay consistent, and let familiarity do the heavy lifting. Because sometimes, in both branding and cooking, it’s not about reinventing the dish, it’s about perfecting it over time.
Broadband
DIPA adds Shaurrya Teleservices to strengthen digital infra push
Focus on OFC, IBS grows as India scales 5G and prepares for 6G future.
MUMBAI: Another brick in India’s digital highway only this one carries signals, not traffic. Digital Infrastructure Providers Association (DIPA) has onboarded Shaurrya Teleservices Private Limited as a new member, tightening its grip on the next phase of the country’s connectivity build-out. The move aligns with DIPA’s role under the National Broadband Mission 2.0 (NBM 2.0), where the emphasis is increasingly shifting to the less visible but far more critical layers of digital infrastructure. Two areas stand out: Optical Fibre Cable (OFC), the backbone of high-speed broadband and rural connectivity, and In-Building Solutions (IBS), which determine how well signals actually work once they enter homes, offices and malls in a 5G-first world.
Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Gurugram, Shaurrya Teleservices operates as a Category I infrastructure provider, offering a wide suite of services from telecom tower deployment and Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) to IoT, AI-enabled network platforms, SD-WAN and Network-as-a-Service (NaaS). Its partnerships span major operators including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, Reliance Jio and BSNL, positioning it firmly within India’s core connectivity ecosystem.
At a time when India’s telecom footprint is expanding rapidly now comprising 8.53 lakh mobile towers and approximately 3.21 million base transceiver stations (BTS), the focus is no longer just on scale, but on depth and quality of coverage. Indoor connectivity, fibre penetration and network intelligence are emerging as the real differentiators as the country pushes towards universal broadband and prepares the groundwork for 6G.
DIPA’s leadership sees the onboarding as part of a broader strategy to blend legacy infrastructure strength with newer, agile players capable of driving innovation. For Shaurrya, the membership offers a seat at the policy table, where industry and regulation increasingly intersect.
The bigger picture is hard to miss. India’s infrastructure story is no longer siloed digital networks are converging with energy systems and industrial corridors, creating a tightly interwoven backbone for economic growth. In that context, adding new players isn’t just expansion, it’s reinforcement.
Because in the race to connect a billion people, the strongest networks aren’t just built, they’re continuously rewired.
