Ad Campaigns
Navi UPI’s unbelievable growth takes centre stage in new brand campaign
MUMBAI: Navi Technologies Limited, one of India’s fastest-growing financial services companies, unveiled its new brand campaign spotlighting the rapid growth of its flagship payments product Navi UPI.
Titled “Some things grow unbelievably fast”, the campaign highlights Navi UPI’s swift climb to become India’s fastest growing UPI app* in just two years since launch.
The campaign aims to build strong consumer recall and reinforce Navi UPI’s position as a high-performing, home-grown disruptor in the country’s digital payments landscape.
Conceptualised by Sideways, the campaign launched with two tongue-in-cheek TVCs that use surreal, humorous analogies to depict unexpected, rapid transformation – a nod to the pace of Navi UPI’s growth.
Rajiv Naresh, CEO, Navi Technologies, said, “We’ve let Navi UPI’s growth speak for itself until now. This campaign puts a spotlight on that journey and captures our momentum in a way that’s simple and memorable. Navi UPI has reached millions in two years, but what we’re building is bigger – a sustained, fast-scaling payments destination for Indians.”
Abhijit Avasthi, Founder of Sideways, added, “The objective was to stand out with our ads from the other UPI players in the market. The fact that Navi is unlike any other UPI app is the reason why it has grown so fast. After that, it was just a matter of sprinkling some quirk and making something memorable. Having a client that placed their trust in us was the cherry on the cake.”
The campaign launched with high-impact placements on leading OTT platforms JioHotstar and Sony LIV during the India vs. England test match. This is followed by a rich mix across YouTube, digital platforms, print and connected TV properties.
The films serve as the foundation for a broader, multi-phase storytelling rollout over the coming quarter, with a variety of additional assets – including static, video, and contextual formats – to be introduced across digital, offline and ATL channels.
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.
