Ad Campaigns
RuPay launches ‘RuPay Credit Card on UPI’ campaign for IPL 2023
Mumbai: National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in partnership with the Indian Premier League (IPL) kicks-off the 2023 season with ‘RuPay Credit Card on UPI’ campaign that has been conceptualised by DDB Mudra Group. The campaign focuses on creating greater customer awareness of the game-changing product offering from NPCI which allows users to access their RuPay credit cards through the UPI platform.
The opening day of the season features Dinesh Karthik in a humorous advertisement highlighting the benefits of RuPay credit card linkage on UPI, encouraging the viewers to ask their bank for the same. Additionally, as part of the campaign, three other films developed by DDB Mudra Group will also be released throughout the league season.
This seminal development will provide customers with the best of both worlds, integrating the reliability and convenience of UPI with the unmatched incentives that the feature has to offer, thereby creating an unrivaled consumer experience. The films playfully describe how customers will be able to use UPI, while also enjoying rewards and the loyalty points program of their favorite credit card.
The use of this card is live on cards issued by HDFC Bank, BoB Financial Services, Canara Bank, Indian Bank, Punjab National Bank, Union Bank of India, and Axis Bank. Other banks like Kotak Mahindra Bank shall soon be live with their UPI functionality on RuPay credit cards in a few days. Currently, the UPI apps offering this service are BHIM, MobiKwik, Paytm, Slice and PhonePe.
Commenting on the campaign, NPCI COO Praveena Rai said, “We, at NPCI, are proud to share this path-defining offering of RuPay Credit Cards on UPI and believe it would play a significant role in India’s credit journey. We have always looked to create innovative products facilitating convenience for better payments systems for the nation. Our partnership with IPL, just like the partnership between RuPay and UPI, will amplify our efforts in consumer awareness on the benefits of having access to credit on UPI. The RuPay campaign is witty and breaks clutter. We hope consumers enjoy the ads, as they do IPL.”
DDB Mudra Group CCO & executive director Rahul Mathew said, “RuPay is the first credit card that allows you to pay through UPI. It’s such a breakthrough and disruption in the category. We felt a product that’s so differentiated and is a standout, needs work that is the same.”
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.
