Brands
Piush Kothari joins Croma as chief customer experience officer
The veteran strategy executive brings a formidable digital and P&L pedigree to India’s most trusted consumer electronics retailer
MUMBAI: Croma, the Tata-backed consumer electronics chain, appointed Piush Kothari as its chief customer experience officer, the company announced this month. Kothari, who most recently served as executive vice-president and head of subscriptions and media at JioHotstar, joins with a mandate to put customers at the centre of everything Croma does, from the moment they walk into a store, physical or digital, through the entirety of the ownership experience.
“Croma has been a trusted name in consumer electronics for millions of Indians,” Kothari said on joining. “I’m looking forward to working with Shibashish and the incredible team at Croma where we want to keep raising the bar by keeping customers at the centre of what we do.”
It is a significant hire. Kothari brings nearly two decades of cross-industry experience spanning strategy, digital, and P&L roles at some of India’s most consequential organisations. At JioHotstar, where he spent a year and five months, he oversaw SVOD revenues, subscribers, and the media centre of excellence. Before that, at The Walt Disney Company, where he spent five years and seven months, he led product, growth, partnerships and international expansion for Disney+ Hotstar, scaling its subscription business across India and running standalone operations in Singapore, Canada and the United Kingdom. He also served as a nominee director on the board of Mashal Sports, the entity behind Pro Kabaddi League, where he helped clinch a five-year broadcasting and streaming media rights deal and steered the league through its post-Covid comeback season.
His earlier career is equally eclectic. At Aditya Birla Group, Kothari straddled the chairman’s office and the payments bank, where he helped launch the bank’s UPI consumer app and drove the acquisition of over a million customers in four months at industry-leading cost. Monthly UPI transaction processing crossed Rs 1 billion in just the second month of launch, a remarkable feat in 2018. Before that, stints at Accenture Strategy, Shell and Welspun rounded out a career that has taken him from oil and gas boardrooms to fintech war rooms.
Educated at IIM Calcutta and St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta, Kothari is the kind of executive who has seen enough corporate theatre to know what actually moves the needle.
At Croma, the needle he needs to move is customer experience, and if his track record is anything to go by, it is in very capable hands.
Brands
Thermocool rolls out Navratri campaign on trains and stations
Nine day digital push blends devotion and storytelling for travellers
NEW DELHI: Thermocool Home Appliances has launched a high-visibility digital campaign during Navratri, turning railway stations and trains into storytelling spaces that blend culture with brand engagement.
The nine-day campaign spans key high-footfall locations including Katra, Anand Vihar, Gorakhpur, Prayagraj and Moradabad, along with the Vande Bharat Express on the Delhi-Katra route. Travellers encounter the campaign across station screens, concourses and onboard infotainment systems, making it hard to miss.
What sets the initiative apart is its narrative approach. Each day of Navratri is dedicated to one of the nine forms of Goddess Durga, with digital content explaining the significance and stories behind each day. The result is a campaign that does more than advertise, it informs and engages passengers in the middle of their journeys.
For director of sales and marketing Tanuj Gupta, the idea was to go beyond visibility. He noted that while Navratri is widely celebrated, awareness of its deeper meaning is often limited, and the campaign aims to bridge that gap in a simple and accessible way.
By tapping into high-traffic transit spaces, Thermocool is placing its message where audiences naturally gather, from busy platforms to train compartments. The repeated exposure across these touchpoints is designed to build familiarity while creating a more meaningful connection with consumers.
In a season marked by devotion and festivity, the campaign finds a clever middle ground. It turns everyday travel into a cultural moment, where storytelling travels alongside the passenger.
