Brands
Lava signs Kartik Aaryan as brand ambassador to unveil latest smartphone in Blaze series
Mumbai: Lava International has on-boarded Kartik Aaryan as the brand ambassador to endorse its smartphone category while launching the Lava Blaze Pro.
Lava will soon commence a 360-degree marketing campaign featuring Kartik and the range of its smartphones.
An inspiration to millions, Kartik is a self-made man who exudes energy, vitality, and versatility and with his content projects a progressive, innovative, and challenging spirit, which aptly resonates with Lava’s philosophy.
Sharing his thoughts on the new brand association, the actor said, “I am delighted to associate with Lava, a home-grown brand that has established itself as a leading Indian end-to-end smartphone company. It is a matter of sheer excitement to see how Lava is bringing technologies that appeal to the youth of the country. My association is based on the resonance of our shared ethos of being #ProudlyIndian and standing apart from the crowd with a unique proposition.”
Taking the consumer experience a notch higher, Lava is also offering a brand-new pre-sales experience “Demo@home,” which will allow customers to experience Blaze Pro first-hand while at home or any other location of their convenience. Customers can avail these aforementioned services by visiting the official Lava website.
“Signing Kartik Aryan is the perfect fit for Lava. Both are challenging the norms of their industries and creating new expectations. Kartik’s superlative performances have earned him a massive fan following, and Lava’s exciting new launches are setting new standards in the smartphone segment. We are on a mission to provide smartphone customers an excellent Indian alternative, and with Kartik’s stardom and persona, we are confident of getting there faster,” said Lava head of marketing, sales and distribution strategy Mugdh Rajit.
The newly launched smartphone Blaze Pro is styled with frosted glass back and comes with high camera quality, rightfully designed to specifically uplift the customer experience. Blaze Pro comes with 6X zoom & 50MP triple rear camera for a superior photography experience. Blaze Pro is loaded with features like Android 12, 4 GB RAM + 64 GB ROM for storing pictures, videos, and large files, eight MP front camera for a superior photography experience and selfies, bottom firing speaker, type C charging, side fingerprint scanner for enhanced security, among others.
The Blaze Pro has a MediaTek helio G37 chipset for unmatched performance, a large 5000 mAh battery for long-lasting usage, and a 10W type-C fast charger to fully charge the phone in lesser time. It also has a 6.5 & 20:9 notch HD display for an unmatched viewing experience.
Priced at Rs 10,499, Blaze Pro comes in four different colour variants – glass green, glass orange, glass blue, glass gold available on Flipkart, Lava e-store and retail stores.
Lava products are developed after extensive research with a strong emphasis on quality and driving innovation. Lava is constantly looking for ways to provide its customers access to state-of-the-art features on their phones to enhance their experience significantly. With the on-boarding of Kartik Aaryan as the brand ambassador, Lava aims to increase its consumer base by attracting more prospects, especially millennials and gen-z, who form the largest chunk of consumers.
Brands
Rakesh Menon joins Paytm as avp – lending
Fintech product leader takes on new role after building digital lending, payments and credit products across fintech ecosystem
MUMBAI: Rakesh Menon has joined Paytm as assistant vice president – lending, taking on a new role focused on strengthening the company’s lending and credit products.
Prior to this, Menon worked at Profectus Capital Pvt Ltd as chief manager – payments based financing and digital lending.
At Profectus, he designed and launched digital credit products for merchants with variable cash flows, including overdraft-linked and revenue-share lending models. He led end-to-end LOS–LMS API integrations with payment partners and aggregators, enabling real-time underwriting, disbursal and repayment workflows.
He also worked on funnel optimisation initiatives using journey analytics, improving onboarding, KYC and disbursal conversion by 35 per cent. He developed ecosystem partnerships for transaction-data-based credit assessment and automated settlement systems, and collaborated with credit and data science teams to strengthen risk models and early delinquency detection.
Menon standardised partner onboarding and API frameworks, reducing go-live timelines by 40 per cent and improving digital scalability.
Before Profectus Capital, he worked at PayU as senior manager – presales lead – enterprise business from August 2022 to August 2023. He set up a national presales function for fintech and digital commerce clients, aligning solutions such as EMI, BNPL, BBPS and offer engines to merchant requirements.
He also helped improve conversion rates by around 15 per cent through merchant persona mapping, demo frameworks and structured sales playbooks, working closely with product and go-to-market teams.
From April 2019 to July 2022, Menon served as business unit head – SMB – direct acquisitions at Worldline, where he built the SMB online payments vertical from scratch. The business scaled to Rs 2,500 crore in annual transaction volume, growing at 45 per cent year-on-year.
During this period, he introduced paperless onboarding processes including eKYC and eSign, developed partner dashboards and CRM automation systems, and integrated platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce and Tally to expand merchant adoption.
Across roles, Menon has worked across digital lending, payments and merchant financing, with experience in product development, ecosystem partnerships, API integrations and fintech-led growth strategies.
At Paytm, he will focus on scaling lending products and strengthening digital credit infrastructure within the company’s financial services ecosystem.
His appointment comes as fintech firms continue to expand their lending and embedded finance offerings in a competitive market.
