Brands
Brand storyteller Deepti Gera swaps water bottles for wedding bands
MUMBAI: Deepti Gera has traded hydration for celebration. The marketing maven, who spent the past few years making Indians thirsty for Bisleri and gadget-hungry at Croma, has joined TBZ – The Original as general manager for brand, creative and content. It’s a shift from everyday essentials to once-in-a-lifetime sparkle—and she’s ready to make it shine.
With 15 years of creative firepower under her belt, Gera has built her reputation turning data into drama and insights into impact. She has worked with a string of Indian consumer brands: Sony Entertainment Television, Amul, and a rotating door of agency heavyweights including Leo Burnett, Ogilvy, FCB Ulka and Havas. She’s the sort who sees digital, social, print and television not as separate beasts, but as chapters in the same brand story.
At TBZ, she faces a delicious challenge: how to keep a 100-year-old jewellery brand feeling fresh without losing the trust and craftsmanship that made it glitter in the first place. It’s heritage meets hustle, tradition meets TikTok.
Gera seems unfazed. She’s reuniting with Kapil Budukh, a familiar collaborator, under the banner of “clear thinking, creative integrity, and strong leadership”—corporate speak for “we’ve done this dance before.”
Her philosophy? Creativity should surprise, connect and inspire—but never just for art’s sake. It’s got to move the needle, shift the merchandise, make the cash register sing. In her seven-month stint as assistant general manager at Bisleri last year, she’s proved she can do just that.
Now comes the real test: convincing an evolving luxury audience that TBZ isn’t just their grandparents’ jeweller. If anyone can make century-old gold feel like tomorrow’s must-have, it’s Gera. She’s already declared her love for storytelling. TBZ had better prepare for a plot twist.
Brands
Godrej clarifies ‘GI’ identifier after logo similarity debate
Says GI is not a logo, will not replace Godrej signature across products.
MUMBAI: In a branding storm where shapes did the talking, Godrej is now spelling things out. Godrej Industries Group (GIG) has issued a clarification on its newly introduced ‘GI’ identifier, addressing questions around its purpose and design following a wave of online criticism. At the centre of the debate were two concerns: whether the new mark replaces the long-standing Godrej logo, and whether its geometric design mirrors other corporate identities.
The company has drawn a clear line. The Godrej signature logo, it said, remains unchanged and continues to be the sole logo across all consumer-facing products and services. The ‘GI’ mark, by contrast, is not a logo but a corporate group identifier intended for use alongside the Godrej signature or company name, and aimed at stakeholders such as investors, media and talent rather than consumers.
The need for such a distinction stems from the 2024 restructuring of the broader Godrej Group into two separate business entities. With both continuing to operate under the same Godrej name and signature, the identifier is positioned as a way to differentiate the Godrej Industries Group at a corporate level.
The rollout, however, triggered a broader conversation on design originality. Critics pointed to similarities between the GI mark’s geometric composition and logos used by companies globally, raising questions about distinctiveness.
Responding to this, GIG said its intellectual property and legal review found that such overlaps are common in minimalist, geometry-led design systems. Basic forms such as circles and rectangles appear across dozens of brand identities worldwide, the company noted.
It added that the identifier emerged from an extensive design process and was chosen for its simplicity, allowing it to sit alongside the Godrej signature without competing visually. While acknowledging that elemental shapes may appear less distinctive in isolation, the group emphasised that the mark is part of a broader identity system that includes a custom typeface, sonic branding and other proprietary elements.
Following legal and ethical assessments, the company said it found no impediment to using the identifier, reiterating that the GI mark is a corporate tool not a consumer-facing symbol.
In short, the logo isn’t changing but the conversation around it certainly has.
