MAM
Pushing boundaries for Vistara
MUMBAI: The Indian aviation sector welcomed another member last week when Tata Singapore Airlines, a 51:49 joint venture between the Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, announced to fly high in the Indian skies.
Christened, Vistara, it aims to will bring the pleasure back to flying by treating passengers as individuals and not seat numbers.
The Ray+Keshavan | Brand Union has created the brand for the new airline; it developed the strategy, name, visual identity and brand experience for the full-service airline.
R+K | BU chairperson Sujata Keshavan wants every single aspect of Vistara to reflect its global standards and Asian soul.
Hence, the extensive project took over six months, since, it involved a deep dive into customer and market research, in India and globally. The entire team committed to the project. “From our naming experts to our strategists, our designers to our studio, everyone has been living and breathing Vistara for the last few months. We had to be super careful about secrecy and we managed that, even though it was a large team,” says R+K | BU lead engagement manager Neethi Isaac.
The name and the logo were well thought of. R+K | BU focused on names that are Indian in their origin, but can be easily pronounced and remembered by a global audience. The name development involved culture and phonetic checks in over 20 countries. Vistara is derived from vistaar means ‘infinite expanse’ in Sanskrit.
As for the logo, Vistara star is derived from a yantra, a mathematical form that depicts an unbounded, perfectly balanced universe. The colours aubergine and gold were chosen because they are distinctive and cue premium experiences, anywhere in the world. The name Vistara is written in hand-drawn letters, the mix of contemporary uppercase and lowercase letters signaling that the brand is inclusive and warm.
The agency feels proud to get the coveted project, something that every agency in the world wanted to be part of. The Tatas and Singapore Airlines – both extremely sophisticated and savvy organisations – evaluated a number of agencies and before pinning on it. “I think we won the project because we could match their expectations. We have a deep understanding of India, a global network and a history of being quite obsessive about every brand we have worked on,” proudly says Isaac.
When asked about how involved the client was in the whole procedure, Isaac says, “We follow a very rigorous process with clearly marked milestones so the project was run very tightly. We have a set calendar for updates, conference calls and face-to-face meetings. The client was very involved as you can imagine. We spend a lot of energy upfront, on making sure we get it right the first time and avoid iterations that waste time and energy – neither side wants that. The brand positioning and name struck a chord with everyone immediately – it was a unanimous decision. From there to the identity and brand experience was a really smooth process. This was greatly helped by the fact that all teams had this sense of shared purpose. Everyone involved with this project knows that they are creating history!”
With the limitless boundaries to cover, the airlines’ through its brand positing wants to make it clear that it will provide seamless flying experiences, thoughtfully delivered.
MAM
Reliance-Meta AI JV names Parminder Singh as CEO
REIL, backed 70 per cent by Reliance and 30 per cent by Meta, targets enterprise AI scale.
MUMBAI: India’s AI ambitions just found their chief navigator and the roadmap looks anything but small. Reliance Enterprise Intelligence Limited (REIL), the enterprise AI joint venture between Reliance Industries Limited (70 per cent) and Meta Platforms (30 per cent), has appointed Parminder Singh as its founding Chief Executive Officer, signalling a serious push to scale artificial intelligence adoption across Indian businesses.
The mandate is ambitious: fuse Meta’s AI capabilities with Reliance’s enterprise reach, AI compute infrastructure, and the nationwide connectivity of Jio to build a full-stack enterprise AI ecosystem. In simpler terms, REIL is positioning itself as both the engine and the highway for India’s AI journey.
Singh brings a heavyweight résumé to the role, with leadership stints across Google, Apple, Twitter, and IBM. His experience spans large-scale digital transformations across Asia-Pacific, most notably at Mediacorp, where he led an AI-driven overhaul as Chief Commercial and Digital Officer.
More recently, he co-founded Clayboxai, an advisory firm focused on building AI fluency within organisations, and Wekamp, an AI-powered community platform currently in pilot both signalling his continued focus on practical, enterprise-led AI adoption.
The appointment comes at a moment when India’s AI narrative is shifting from experimentation to execution. Akash Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm, described enterprise AI as a “generational opportunity”, noting that Singh’s mix of global expertise and regional understanding makes him central to REIL’s next phase.
For Singh, the decision appears equally deliberate. A conversation with Ambani during a trip to New Zealand, he said, framed the opportunity as one that could shape the future of enterprise AI in India, a proposition difficult to ignore.
At its core, REIL is betting on a gap in the market, enterprises need not just cutting-edge technology, but a partner that understands local business realities. With Reliance’s scale and Meta’s AI backbone, the venture is positioning itself as that bridge.
If execution matches ambition, this is less about launching another tech venture and more about laying the groundwork for how Indian enterprises think, build, and scale with AI in the years ahead.
