MAM
Virat Kohli becomes most valuable celebrity for third consecutive year
Mumbai: Indian cricket team skipper Virat Kohli has scored a hat-trick of being India’s most valuable celebrity. His brand value rose by 39 per cent to $237.5 million in 2019.
Duff & Phelps released key findings from the fifth edition of its Celebrity Brand Valuation Study 2019: New is Gold.
Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar has out thrown Deepika Padukone to claim the second spot in the list with a rise in brand value by 55 per cent to $104.5 million.
Meanwhile, the dynamic power couple, Ranveer and Deepika, claimed the third spot with a brand value of $93.5 million each. Deepika retained her most-valuable female celebrity status for the second consecutive year, whereas Singh moved up a spot, to now occupy the same position as Padukone.
The total value of the top 20 celebrity brands stands at $1.1 billion, with the top 10 contributing about 75 per cent of the total value, the report says.
“This year we saw the new generation celebrities make it to the top 20. Apart from the celebrities who were featured in last year’s study, this year, we have Ayushmann Khurrana (rank 10), Tiger Shroff (rank 17) and Rohit Sharma (rank 20) with a cumulative brand value of $87.5 million,” said Duff & Phelps mnaging director Aviral Jain.
The list being majorly dominated by Bollywood celebrities, sportspersons such as Virat Kohli, Mahindra Singh Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, and Rohit Sharma have also been featured.
Jain further added, “Even though brands changed their approach of sticking to established actors by roping in new faces, overall the industry managed to stay on course with the perfect blend of traditional and new.”
Duff & Phelps managing director and Asia Pacific leader for valuation services Varun Gupta said: “This is the dawn of a new era for the media and entertainment sector. The industry has seen experimentation, be it celebrities moving from traditional mainstream endorsements towards investments in brands, the rise of digital format advertising campaigns, or the onset of over-the-top (OTT) stars who are breaking new ground in endorsements.”
“Brands and celebrities have parallelly adopted the path of conscious advertising and filmmaking by choosing uplifting topics and making the narrative fewer windows dressed, an important facet for today’s Gen Y and Gen Z,” Gupta added.
Brands
Zscaler, Airtel launch India AI Cyber Research Centre
New hub to boost cyber resilience and trusted AI use
NEW DELHI: As India’s digital engine roars ahead, so do the risks riding shotgun. In response, Zscaler, Inc. and Bharti Airtel have joined hands to launch the AI and Cyber Threat Research Center – India, a national initiative aimed at strengthening the country’s cyber defences and accelerating responsible AI adoption.
The centre is designed as a multi stakeholder platform that brings together industry, government and academia. Its mission is clear: protect critical sectors such as telecom, banking and energy, shield everyday digital users, and future proof India’s fast expanding online ecosystem.
India has long been a major innovation hub for Zscaler, with a substantial portion of its cyber research talent based here. With this new centre, that footprint evolves into a national collaboration engine. The idea is simple but ambitious, build in India, for India, and help power the country’s journey towards a secure and digitally self reliant future.
The timing is telling. India is building digital systems at population scale, not just enterprise scale. That scale has widened the attack surface dramatically. At the same time, cyber criminals and nation state actors are deploying AI to scan, probe and exploit vulnerabilities in minutes.
Zscaler’s research arm, ThreatLabz India, reports millions of infiltration attempts every month. These include espionage campaigns linked to regional geopolitical tensions, 1.2 million intrusion attempts from 20,000 sources targeting 58 Indian digital entities, and a rise in zero day exploit attempts across multiple industries.
In such an environment, perimeter based security models are struggling to keep pace. The new centre aims to push a shift towards secure by design systems and Zero Trust architecture.
Its strategy rests on four pillars: protect through real time intelligence, remediate by working directly with government agencies, facilitate adoption of AI driven security and Zero Trust frameworks, and build a stronger cybersecurity talent pipeline through specialised certifications.
As founding members, Zscaler and Airtel will combine global threat intelligence with local network visibility. Zscaler will deploy a dedicated India focused research team and draw insights from its Zero Trust Exchange platform, which processes over 500 billion daily transactions worldwide. Airtel, meanwhile, will contribute deep visibility into IoT and mobile traffic, helping detect suspicious activity faster and coordinate response across the ecosystem.
Bharti Airtel executive vice chairman Gopal Vittal, said the partnership extends Airtel’s commitment to safeguarding customers and the nation’s digital fabric. He added that the collaboration would address challenges unique to the Indian market and encourage secure and confident digital engagement.
Zscaler chief executive, chairman and founder Jay Chaudhry, said India’s digital ambition cannot be secured with legacy firewalls and VPNs. He noted that a modern Zero Trust architecture is essential for a hyper connected world and that the new centre would harness the scale of Zscaler’s global security cloud while empowering a new generation of Indian cyber defenders.
Additional members from critical public and private sectors are expected to join the initiative in the coming months, expanding its scope and deepening collaboration.
In a world where threats travel at machine speed, India’s answer is to think faster, collaborate wider and build smarter.
