Brands
Sourav Ganguly becomes undercover delivery boy for Pizza Hut
MUMBAI: What if you were standing in a queue and suddenly discovered that the person standing next to you is your favourite celebrity or hero? Will you be starry-eyed, nervous or excited? That’s exactly how people assembled at the Sourav Ganguly Cricket Academy in Kolkata on 15 May felt. After all, they had the Bengal Tiger himself standing amidst them, but they stood there, none the wiser.
Leading pizza chain, Pizza Hut, recently curated a massive surprise experience in the Kolkata, in a creative collaboration with Rannvijay Singha and Sourav Ganguly.
A social media campaign titled ‘Cricket with Rannvijay’ called out to cricket fans and the youth of Kolkata challenging them to play better than Rannvijay and get an opportunity to enjoy Pizza Hut pan pizzas with him. But the fun did not end there.
The video shows how the unsuspecting crowd was electrified with excitement as they realise that they ended up casually playing cricket with cricketer Sourav Ganguly.
The video begins with Rannvijay Singh engaging people from the audience by inviting them to beat his score. He assigns the crowd with the power to decide the score every time someone bats, including himself. After a few friendly shots, Ranvijay adds some delicious pizza fun to the cricket fever on the ground. He pulls out his mobile phone, goes on Pizza Hut’s m-site and within minutes, orders Pizza Hut signature pan pizzas for everyone. Hearing this, the crowd begins to cheer and hoot in anticipation of the delicious pizzas. The excitement changes pace when the pizza delivery boys (more so one of them in specific) start commenting on the people batting and how they could improve their game to which Rannvijay counters and challenges one of the delivery boys to play.
This delivery boy begins playing a right-handed game. A few unimpressive attempts later, he changes his stance to one that would be very familiar to the eye of a true cricket buff. And behold, then begins a barrage of 4s and 6s leaving the crowd stunned. His superb batting skill draws massive cheers from the onlooking crowd, including Rannvijay. Ranvijay moves forward to take a selfie with the Pizza Hut delivery boy who stunned everyone with his left-handed batting skills.
The delivery boy smirks and peels off his (prosthetic) nose, and starts getting rid of his make-up. And lo and behold, the delivery boy was none other than ‘Dada’, the Bengal Tiger himself – Sourav Ganguly.
The crowd and players, naturally, are beside themselves with excitement, thronging against the nets to catch a glimpse of Ganguly, vying to take selfies with their hero, and delighted that some of them actually played with him. Ganguly then mingles with his fans before leaving the venue on a happy note, to cheers of ‘Dada’.
Brands
Rakesh Menon joins Paytm as avp – lending
Fintech product leader takes on new role after building digital lending, payments and credit products across fintech ecosystem
MUMBAI: Rakesh Menon has joined Paytm as assistant vice president – lending, taking on a new role focused on strengthening the company’s lending and credit products.
Prior to this, Menon worked at Profectus Capital Pvt Ltd as chief manager – payments based financing and digital lending.
At Profectus, he designed and launched digital credit products for merchants with variable cash flows, including overdraft-linked and revenue-share lending models. He led end-to-end LOS–LMS API integrations with payment partners and aggregators, enabling real-time underwriting, disbursal and repayment workflows.
He also worked on funnel optimisation initiatives using journey analytics, improving onboarding, KYC and disbursal conversion by 35 per cent. He developed ecosystem partnerships for transaction-data-based credit assessment and automated settlement systems, and collaborated with credit and data science teams to strengthen risk models and early delinquency detection.
Menon standardised partner onboarding and API frameworks, reducing go-live timelines by 40 per cent and improving digital scalability.
Before Profectus Capital, he worked at PayU as senior manager – presales lead – enterprise business from August 2022 to August 2023. He set up a national presales function for fintech and digital commerce clients, aligning solutions such as EMI, BNPL, BBPS and offer engines to merchant requirements.
He also helped improve conversion rates by around 15 per cent through merchant persona mapping, demo frameworks and structured sales playbooks, working closely with product and go-to-market teams.
From April 2019 to July 2022, Menon served as business unit head – SMB – direct acquisitions at Worldline, where he built the SMB online payments vertical from scratch. The business scaled to Rs 2,500 crore in annual transaction volume, growing at 45 per cent year-on-year.
During this period, he introduced paperless onboarding processes including eKYC and eSign, developed partner dashboards and CRM automation systems, and integrated platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce and Tally to expand merchant adoption.
Across roles, Menon has worked across digital lending, payments and merchant financing, with experience in product development, ecosystem partnerships, API integrations and fintech-led growth strategies.
At Paytm, he will focus on scaling lending products and strengthening digital credit infrastructure within the company’s financial services ecosystem.
His appointment comes as fintech firms continue to expand their lending and embedded finance offerings in a competitive market.
