Ad Campaigns
315Work Avenue offers to protect you from ‘Indiranagar Gunda’ Rahul Dravid
MUMBAI: If there was one thing that bowled over netizens this weekend, it was Rahul Dravid’s dramatic turn as ‘Indiranagar ka gunda’ in a Cred advertisement. Otherwise known for his cool persona, a commercial managed to do what the fiercest bowlers and toughest competition couldn’t — get Dravid to lose his cool.
To acknowledge and pay tribute to his the cricket legend’s extraordinary performance, coworking space provider 315Work Avenue has come up with witty responses to the new campaign. The company expressed how safe their working space is from ‘gundas’, especially in Indiranagar, where it’s office is located.
It emphasised that, “Our wall is strong enough to keep you safe from Indiranagar Gunda: book your space now,” playing on ‘The Wall’ moniker of the cricketer. The other riposte talked about safety: “Safest Work Place in Indiranagar: Could protect from angry Gunda too.”
315Work Avenue founder Manas Mehrotra said: “The always affable Dravid shouting, smashing rear-view mirrors and throwing coffee, is a brilliant play on his persona. The less than 15 menacing seconds on-screen ad transforms the public image of the former captain of the Indian national cricket team. We could not have imagined that India’s wall would one day be an Indiranagar gunda. As a cricket lover and a fan of Rahul Dravid, we are in awe of the most unexpected character. We came with our response as we wanted to pay an ode to this fantastic campaign and we made sure that we played with words to match the tempo.”
Several other brands like Zomato, Oyo and Parle-G also hitched onto the bandwagon and created some wonderful spinoffs of the Cred ad. Along with the ex-cricketer’s colleagues, including Indian skipper Kohli, top marketing professionals, movie makers and actors also lauded Dravid for his unexpectedly marvellous ‘off-field’ performance. Meanwhile, social media has been in a frenzy since the ad hit the internet, churning out bountiful memes revolving around the rarely-ruffled Rahul Dravid.
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.
