Broadband
Airtel plans special box for full converged entertainment & broadband
MUMBAI: Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel is significantly upping its direct-to-home (DTH) and broadband business. The leading telecom player is looking at bringing a box which will offer a full converged entertainment as well as the capacity to deliver broadband. Although the timeline has been not revealed yet, the box is expected to be launched very soon.
“One of the things we are looking at is to bring in a box, which will offer a full converged entertainment as well as the capacity to deliver broadband. This will happen soon and we are very excited that once we do that, it is a full converged play that we can potentially deliver across multiple spaces. There have been some concerns about cord cutting in the urban areas and metros. We have not seen any evidence of that yet,” Bharti Airtel India and South Asia managing director and chief executive officer Gopal Vittal said in an earnings call.
Airtel Digital TV saw net addition of 634K customers in the quarter. At the end of the first quarter, the DTH arm of Bharti Airtel had 16 million customers with a year-on-year growth of 9.4 per cent. The change in cable and broadcasting sector with the rollout of new tariff order has helped Airtel to grow with a lot of new subscribers coming in from the cable side.
The company’s investments in FTTH pass deployment are now reaping benefits with an expansion in the base and an increase in ARPU as well after ten consecutive quarters of decline. The company is optimistic on the overall market opportunity and focusing on expansion of its fibre presence.
Broadband
Zoff Foods extends Shilpa Shetty partnership into ninth year
Spice brand reinforces trust-led positioning amid growth and funding push.
MUMBAI: Nine years, one flavour and the recipe clearly still works. Zoff Foods has extended its long-running association with Shilpa Shetty, marking nine consecutive years of her as brand ambassador as the company scales its presence across Indian households. What began as a digital-first collaboration has gradually evolved into a defining element of the brand’s identity. Over nearly a decade, the partnership has mirrored Zoff’s own journey from an emerging challenger to a fast-growing FMCG player with a widening footprint across e-commerce, quick commerce and offline retail channels.
The logic behind the continuity is straightforward. In a category where trust and familiarity drive purchase decisions, particularly in spices and ready-to-cook segments, long-term associations tend to carry more weight than short bursts of visibility. Shetty’s positioning as a fitness-conscious, health-aware public figure aligns with the brand’s emphasis on purity and quality factors that are increasingly shaping consumer choices in modern Indian kitchens.
The extension also comes at a time when Zoff Foods is entering a more aggressive growth phase. The company recently raised $2 million in a Pre-Series B funding round led by JM Financial Private Equity, with participation from Aman Gupta, signalling a push towards expanding distribution, product innovation and market reach.
Company executives have positioned the continued partnership as a strategic anchor amid this expansion, reinforcing brand recall while entering new markets. For Shetty, the association remains rooted in shared values around authenticity and ingredient integrity attributes that resonate strongly with increasingly mindful consumers.
In a market crowded with new-age brands and shifting loyalties, Zoff’s approach suggests a different playbook: build slowly, stay consistent, and let familiarity do the heavy lifting. Because sometimes, in both branding and cooking, it’s not about reinventing the dish, it’s about perfecting it over time.
