Ad Campaigns
Mobikwik flips the UPI script with Pocket UPI, ropes in Jaideep Ahlawat for new campaign
MUMBAI: India’s largest digital wallet by transaction value, Mobikwik has kicked off a cheeky new campaign spotlighting its Pocket UPI product — a feature designed to challenge the dominance of traditional bank-linked UPI. The multi-media campaign stars actor Jaideep Ahlawat reprising his no-nonsense cop persona in humorous short films tackling the everyday mess of digital payments.
In the first instalment, Ahlawat is seen policing cluttered bank statements caused by minor UPI transactions, positioning Pocket UPI as a hassle-free alternative. Unlike conventional UPI, Pocket UPI allows users to transact without linking their bank accounts, helping them avoid transaction-related clutter, track monthly expenses better, and make PIN-less payments — all while lowering fraud risks.
“Pocket UPI is our latest push to simplify how India pays”, said Mobikwik CMO Jaskaran Singh Kapany. “And who better than Jaideep to bring gravitas and humour to what is essentially a smart tech switch for consumers”.
The campaign dropped with a teaser on Ahlawat’s Instagram on 16 May, generating celebrity buzz around how his character would solve India’s digital payment headaches. The full film went live today on Mobikwik’s digital channels, with more short films focusing on security, speed, and budgeting tools lined up for release.
According to the Redseer Report, Mobikwik serves over 176.4 million users and 4.6 million merchants and holds a 23 per cent market share in prepaid instrument (PPI) wallet gross transaction value as of November 2024. The company continues to scale its financial services footprint across credit, insurance, savings, and investments.
Founded in 2009 by Bipin Preet Singh and Upasana Taku, Mobikwik has consistently positioned itself at the intersection of innovation and financial access. With Pocket UPI, it is now attempting to rewrite the UPI rulebook altogether.
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.
