e-commerce
Amazon Ads taps Akila Jayaraman to tighten agency and brand ties
NEW DELHI: Amazon Ads India has hired Akila Jayaraman as head, agency partnerships, strengthening its push to knit brand-building and performance media into a single, data-led sales machine.
Jayaraman joins from Jioads, where she was head of gtm strategy and marketing and business head for ecommerce ads. In her new role she will run partnerships across media, ecommerce, Amazon DSP and the group’s full-funnel advertising stack, working with agencies and brands to link awareness campaigns to measurable outcomes.
Amazon Ads director Gulshan Verma, confirmed the appointment on Linkedin, welcoming Jayaraman to what he called the team’s “day one” growth phase.
A seasoned advertising executive, Jayaraman was previously vice-president at Cheil India and has also held senior roles at Madhouse, Comviva Technologies, Ericsson India and Feedback Business Consulting.
Her appointment comes as Amazon steps up its battle with Google, Meta and local platforms for a larger share of India’s fast-growing digital advertising budgets, pitching its closed-loop data and ecommerce reach as a sharper way to turn media spend into sales.
e-commerce
Instamart and Duolingo launch street spell check campaign for Instaprint
Duo the owl fixes signboard typos across cities to showcase instant printing.
MUMBAI: If spelling mistakes had a sworn enemy, it might just be a bright green owl with a printer. Instamart has teamed up with language learning platform Duolingo for a quirky nationwide campaign that turns everyday spelling errors into a public spectacle while promoting its instant printing service, InstaPrint. The playful activation takes aim at the many misspelled shop boards and public signs scattered across Indian streets. From “saloons” that promise haircuts rather than drinks to menus and posters peppered with punctuation mishaps, the campaign sends Duolingo’s mascot Duo on a mission to restore linguistic order.
Armed with Instamart’s instant printing feature, Duo prints corrected versions of the mistakes on the spot and pastes them over the originals. The result is a series of humorous street interventions that have quickly begun circulating on social media.
Photos and videos of the grammar correcting owl have been widely shared online, with amused users reacting to the unexpected spell check patrol. One user joked, “Ab ayega na maza bhidu,” capturing the internet’s delight at the unusual campaign.
Behind the humour lies a practical message. The activation is designed to showcase the capabilities of Instaprint, Instamart’s printing service that allows users to print documents and posters almost instantly.
The company says the feature is meant for everyday needs such as printing resumes, visa documents or last minute posters without the usual scramble to locate a print shop.
Instamart introduced Instaprint in 2025 across select metropolitan cities including Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi. The service allows users to order printed materials directly through the platform, extending the quick commerce model beyond groceries and household essentials.
By combining Duolingo’s famously persistent owl with India’s street level spelling quirks, the campaign taps into the internet’s long running fascination with grammar mistakes while demonstrating a real world use case for instant printing.
After all, in a world full of typos, sometimes what you really need is a quick printer and a very determined language teacher.
