iWorld
Disney+ Hotstar’s Sunil Rayan joins Moloco as chief business officer
Mumbai: Machine learning platform for mobile apps Moloco announced recently that it has hired Sunil Rayan as the company’s first chief business officer.
In his new role, Rayan’s duties will include overseeing all commercial functions across Moloco’s products and platforms, ensuring the proper strategies are implemented. He will report directly to CEO Ikkjin Ahn.
As a pioneer of mobile ad performance marketing, Rayan brings over 25 years of global experience building commercial and product operations & leading go-to-market teams. He also brings a unique skill set and expertise in business strategy and scaling up large technology-driven businesses.
“Together, we will help customers grow significantly by helping them unlock the full value of unique, first-party data with Moloco’s world-leading machine learning and infrastructure solutions,” said the statement.
Prior to Moloco, he served as president and head of Disney+ Hotstar, where he grew the streaming business 8x to over 50+ million subscribers, scaled more than 20 markets internationally for Disney+ and Disney+ Hotstar across India, Southeast Asia, Middle East, and Africa, and led the launch of the next-generation Hotstar streaming platform. Before joining Disney+, Rayan held leadership roles at Google for more than seven years, where he led the Global Mobile App ads business and helped build Google Cloud solutions for games. Prior to that, he was an Associate Partner at McKinsey, serving technology clients across a variety of functions.
“I am happy to welcome Sunil Rayan as our Chief Business Officer. He brings the expertise in enterprise cloud products, engineering, business development, and proven success building & scaling global sales organizations that will help Moloco accelerate its next stage of growth,” said Moloco CEO Ikkjin Ahn. “He is a humble and ambitious leader with a track record for successfully growing global businesses, and we are excited to have him join us on our journey.”
“Moloco is a generational company that is bringing the power of machine learning to programmatic performance advertising and enabling monetization for direct-to-consumer businesses of all sizes,” said Sunil Rayan. “Together, we will help customers grow significantly by helping them unlock the full value of unique, first-party data with Moloco’s world-leading machine learning and infrastructure solutions.”
e-commerce
Instamart gold dig event at Hussain Sagar goes viral
Hyderabad activation ties to gold price lock offer ahead of Akshaya Tritiya
MUMBAI: All that glitters isn’t just gold, it’s also great marketing. A quirky on-ground activation by Instamart at Hussain Sagar Lake has turned into a viral spectacle, with videos of people digging for gold coins flooding social media feeds this week. The campaign, executed in collaboration with Moms, transformed a patch of the city’s iconic lakefront into what online users quickly dubbed a “mini gold rush”. Armed with spades, participants dug through a mud-filled pit in search of hidden gold coins, an activity that drew crowds, cameras and plenty of commentary online, ranging from amused disbelief to outright fascination.
At the heart of the frenzy was a promotional push for Instamart’s ‘Gold Price Lock’ feature, which allows users to secure prevailing gold rates between April 10 and April 16 and complete their purchase later during Akshaya Tritiya, a period traditionally associated with high gold buying. The mechanic cleverly blended physical participation with digital conversion, turning curiosity into a potential transaction.
Branded as ‘Gold Diggers’, the activation leaned into gamified engagement. Those who struck lucky walked away with coins, those who didn’t were nudged with a simple message: lock the price now, buy later. The result was a steady stream of footfall and a surge in user-generated content, as onlookers and participants alike documented the spectacle.
The timing is significant. India remains one of the world’s largest consumers of gold, with demand peaking around Akshaya Tritiya. Data from the World Gold Council suggests the festival alone accounts for roughly 25–30 tonnes of gold purchases annually, making it a high-stakes window for brands looking to tap into consumer sentiment.
As the ‘Gold Price Lock’ feature remains live until April 16, the campaign has already done its job turning a simple product feature into a citywide moment. Because sometimes, the quickest way to get people talking about gold isn’t to sell it, it’s to make them dig for it.
