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.
MUMBAI: In India’s fast-moving payments race, Visa has just swiped in a new leader. The company has named Suresh Sethi as its India country head, marking a key leadership shift as it sharpens its focus on digital payments growth in the market. Sethi steps into the role following his recent exit from Protean eGov Technologies, where he served as chief executive officer. He succeeds Sandeep Ghosh, who has moved on after more than four years at Visa to pursue an external opportunity.
The appointment comes at a time when Visa is doubling down on its expansion strategy across India and the wider region, deepening partnerships and accelerating adoption in an increasingly competitive digital payments ecosystem.
Sethi brings with him a broad, cross-market perspective shaped by decades of experience across corporate banking, retail financial services, mobile money and large-scale government technology initiatives. He began his career at Citigroup, where he spent 14 years working across India, Africa, South America and the United States, focusing on transaction banking services within the corporate bank.
His appointment signals a blend of institutional experience and market familiarity qualities that could prove critical as Visa navigates a landscape where fintech innovation, regulatory evolution and consumer adoption are all accelerating at once.
As digital payments in India continue to scale rapidly, the leadership change underscores a simple reality, in a market where every tap, scan and swipe counts, who leads the charge can matter just as much as the technology itself.
