iWorld
Asian Paints hits the right note with Spotify I-Pop collab
MUMBAI: When pop met paint, sparks and colours flew. In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, Asian Paints teamed up with Spotify for its flagship musical property I-Pop, transforming a night of beats and bops into a feast for the senses. The exclusive, invite-only event wasn’t just about music, it was a full-blown celebration of India’s pop revival, dipped in shades of creativity, colour, and cultural energy.
Spotify’s I-Pop has been instrumental in giving India’s fast-rising pop scene its moment in the spotlight, taking the genre from trending reels to real-world stages. This year’s edition levelled up, as Asian Paints, a brand long associated with turning life into a canvas splashed its signature vibrancy across the venue, creating an experience that looked as stunning as it sounded.
The brand’s artistic flair came alive through a specially commissioned mural, inspired by the spirit of music and celebration. The piece showcased the brilliance of Chromacosm, Asian Paints’ world’s largest architectural colour system boasting 5,300 plus shades. Each brushstroke mirrored the rhythm of the night, marrying melody and hue in perfect harmony.
Guests also found themselves drawn to an interactive photo booth crafted from Asian Paints’ iconic paint buckets, where they could pose and capture Polaroid keepsakes in Love Song, one of the brand’s popular shades ensuring every memory of the night was framed in colour and joy.
The evening’s mood was set ablaze by a star-studded lineup led by Armaan Malik, whose performance sent waves of excitement through the crowd. The pop sensation, charmed by the brand’s mural, received a surprise gift, a custom guitar painted in his favourite Asian Paints shades, echoing the design’s vibrant palette. Other crowd favourites King, Jonita Gandhi, Aditya Rikhari, Hansika Pareek, Sanju Rathod, and Kushagra brought the house down with high-energy performances, each act adding a new splash of sound to the night’s sonic canvas.
For Asian Paints, the collaboration was more than a partnership, it was a statement of intent. From art and cricket to pop culture and digital collaborations, the brand has continually reimagined how creativity connects people. With I-Pop, it extended this ethos into the music space, using its language of colour to complement Spotify’s language of sound.
The result was a night that blurred the lines between visual art and performance, between seeing and feeling. It was as if every beat had a colour and every shade had a song, a perfect duet of design and decibels.
In the end, I-Pop 2025 proved that pop isn’t just a genre, it’s a mood, a movement, and in Asian Paints’ case, a masterpiece in the making.
iWorld
Applause, Story TV team up to push microdrama content
Partnership to create premium short form shows for mobile first viewers
MUMBAI: Applause Entertainment and Story TV are betting on short attention spans with a long-term vision, joining forces to create a slate of premium microdramas for mobile-first audiences.
The partnership brings together Applause’s storytelling pedigree and Story TV’s fast-growing digital reach, with plans to co-produce and distribute bite-sized dramas across genres. As part of the deal, Story TV will also adapt the romantic thriller Hello Mini into a vertical microdrama format, signalling a shift in how stories are being reshaped for smaller screens.
Backed by the Aditya Birla Group, Applause Entertainment has built a reputation for high-quality content with titles like Scam 1992 and Criminal Justice. Story TV, launched in 2025, has quickly scaled up with a library of over 1,000 titles across languages and genres, riding the wave of mobile consumption.
Story TV founder and CEO Saurabh Pandey said, “Phones are now the primary screens for content consumption, and microdramas are evolving into a mainstream format. At Story TV, we are blending storytelling with technology to push this format further.”
He added that the collaboration with Applause Entertainment will help expand the reach of microdramas while introducing a layer of premium storytelling to the space.
Applause Entertainment chief business officer Prasoon Garg said, “At Applause, we have always focused on strong storytelling across formats. As microdramas gain momentum, this partnership allows us to explore the space with a platform that understands both the format and its audience.”
With mobile screens shrinking and content getting sharper, the collaboration hints at a future where storytelling is not just shorter, but smarter, designed to fit neatly into the scroll of everyday life.
