MAM
Air India Express partners Procam races, debuts Runner’s Passport
Airline ties up across races with 20 per cent flight discounts and travel perks.
MUMBAI: For runners chasing finish lines, the journey just got wings. Air India Express has joined hands with Procam International as the Official Airline Partner for all its races, kicking off with the TCS World 10K Bengaluru 2026. The partnership goes beyond race-day branding, focusing instead on the full runner experience from booking flights to crossing the finish line. At its core is a new ‘Runner’s Passport’ initiative, a travel-meets-fitness concept designed to turn each race into a collectible journey.
Participants will receive a specially designed passport at the event Expo, which doubles up as a season-long keepsake. Each completed race earns a unique stamp different for every distance with Bengaluru’s World 10K featuring a signature colour mark. Over time, the passport builds into a personalised record of runs, cities and milestones.
The airline is also offering up to 20 per cent discounts on flights under the “Run Bengaluru, Fly Xpress” proposition, tying travel directly into participation. On race day, runners will have access to baggage management services at the venue, removing a common logistical hurdle and allowing them to focus on performance.
The collaboration spans Procam’s marquee events across key running hubs including Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai cities that collectively draw participants from across India and overseas. The scale is significant, the Bengaluru race alone, a World Athletics Gold Label event, saw its Open 10K category sell out within seven days, underlining surging demand in India’s distance running circuit.
Operationally, Air India Express brings a wide network to the table, operating over 500 daily flights across 45 domestic and 17 international destinations with a fleet of more than 100 aircraft.
The tie-up reflects a growing trend in sports partnerships where brands are no longer just present at the finish line, but embedded across the entire journey. In this case, quite literally: from take-off to touchdown, and then to the final sprint.
MAM
Smytten appoints Shishir Varma as CEO of Pulseai Research
Rebranded AI platform scales with 150 plus clients and 30 million users.
MUMBAI: In a world obsessed with what consumers say, Smytten is betting on what they actually do. The company has appointed Shishir Varma as chief executive officer of Pulseai Research, signalling a sharper push into AI-led, behaviour-driven consumer insights. The move comes as Smytten rebrands its insights vertical from Smytten PulseAI to Pulseai Research, marking a shift away from traditional, project-based research towards a more continuous, intelligence-led model.
Varma brings over 30 years of global experience across APAC markets, including India, China and Japan. Most recently managing director, Insights at Kantar Japan, he has built and scaled consumer insight businesses across geographies, including playing a key role in establishing Millward Brown in India. His mandate now: turn Pulseai into a category-defining platform in a space still dominated by surveys and static reports.
The pitch is straightforward but ambitious. Instead of relying on claimed responses, Pulseai Research taps into observed behaviour leveraging Smytten’s ecosystem of 30 million users built over a decade of product discovery, trials and purchases. The idea is to close the long-standing gap between what consumers claim and how they actually behave.
The numbers suggest early traction. In under 18 months, the platform has onboarded over 150 enterprise clients across sectors, pointing to growing demand for faster, more reliable alternatives to legacy research models.
Under the hood, the platform blends behavioural data with AI and large language model-led analysis to deliver real-time sentiment tracking, scalable qualitative insights, faster quantitative studies and always-on brand intelligence. In practical terms, that means compressing research timelines from weeks to days without sacrificing depth.
The ambition extends beyond FMCG. Pulseai Research is positioning itself as a cross-category intelligence layer, spanning auto, education, gadgets and emerging consumer segments anywhere behaviour-rich data can sharpen decision-making.
For Smytten, the leadership hire is less about optics and more about direction. With Varma at the helm, the company is leaning into a simple but powerful premise: in the age of AI, insight isn’t just about asking better questions, it’s about watching more closely.
