iWorld
WhatsApp collabs with Star Sports to highlight its privacy features’ power
Mumbai: Star Sports, India’s leading sports broadcaster, has unveiled an insightful social-first collaboration with WhatsApp, ‘Privacy Unplugged’- a captivating five-part short-form content series, facilitated by Starcom, that underscores the paramount significance of privacy features within today’s digital realm. This exclusive property presents poignant and personal narratives of our much-loved sporting champions, intricately woven around the central tenet of privacy.
The line-up features eminent cricket stars including Rishabh Pant and Shreyas Iyer, prodigious cricket talent Jemimah Rodrigues, hockey icon Rani Rampal, and accomplished footballer Gurpreet Singh Sandhu. Each athlete’s unique story serves as a powerful catalyst for widespread awareness, highlighting the advanced privacy features introduced by WhatsApp, and further emphasizing the platform’s unwavering commitment to user safety and data protection.
Speaking about the association with WhatsApp (Meta), Star Sports head – ad sales Kingshuk Mitra said, “This marks our third collaboration with Meta, and we’re excited to be associating with WhatsApp for the ongoing ‘Privacy Unplugged’ series. We’ve brought on board a few highly regarded sports stars to emphasize the importance of privacy in today’s interconnected world. Star Sports’ extensive reach of 30 million fans across social media platforms enables WhatsApp to effectively spread the campaign’s message. This content series also lays the groundwork for potential collaborations with other brands, allowing us to craft compelling stories that deeply connect with our audience.”
Meta strategic media planning lead APAC Natasha Kapoor said, “We’re thrilled to associate with Star Sports to highlight the importance of secure and private messaging, through the personal stories of some of India’s top athletes. It’s a great privilege that millions of Indians trust WhatsApp to deliver their personal messages everyday. This series reinforces the role that WhatsApp’s multiple privacy features play in enabling our users to stay connected with their loved ones, have meaningful conversations and even express their authentic selves, privately.”
Chief operating officer Niti Kumar said, “Starcom discovered that India’s beloved athletes, respected by millions, hold an exceptional talent for safeguarding the most critical aspects of their lives even as they artfully define their individual understandings of ‘privacy’. This insightful discovery enabled Starcom to bring about a strategic partnership between WhatsApp and Star Sports, which aims to unravel the narratives around privacy in the lives of India’s premier athletes.”
The Privacy Unplugged series spotlights the need for privacy in the lives of athletes. Each story underlines how WhatsApp’s built-in layers of privacy help create a safe space for our champions to express themselves freely and have their most private conversations.
Content Showcase
Rishabh Pant: Recovery in Private: After a life-threatening accident, Rishabh Pant’s private recovery journey becomes the focal point. WhatsApp’s End-to-End Encrypted platform empowers him and gives him a safe space to share his progress securely with family, friends, mentors, and coaches.
Shreyas Iyer: Finding confidence in Private: Shreyas Iyer uses WhatsApp’s ‘View Once’ feature to share his favorite magic tricks, fostering private conversations that encourage young cricketers to open up about their challenges in a space they feel comfortable in.
Jemimah Rodrigues: Being herself in Private: WhatsApp’s ‘Chat Lock’ feature help’s Jemimah Rodrigues secure her private conversations with a select group of friends, allowing her to maintain her public image while being her homebody self in private amongst her girl tribe.
Gurpreet Singh Sandhu: Finding focus in Private: As India’s top goalkeeper, Gurpreet Singh Sandhu relies on WhatsApp’s ‘Silence Unknown Callers’ feature to cut out the white noise and eliminate spam, preserving his mental focus during rigorous training.
Rani Rampal: Training in Private: Rani Rampal leverages WhatsApp’s ‘Online Presence’ privacy feature to stay connected, mentor and give dedicated time to the next generation of girls aspiring to play hockey for India, offering them a secure and personal space for learning.
e-commerce
Visa report tracks rise of India’s affluent, experience-led spending
Affluent base doubles to 130 lakh, travel 58 per cent of elite spends.
MUMBAI: In India’s new luxury playbook, it’s less about owning more and more about living better. A new whitepaper by Visa Consulting and Analytics (VCA) maps a decisive shift in India’s affluent economy, where spending is becoming more intentional, experience-led, and closely tied to personal identity rather than pure income growth.
Titled India’s Affluent Economy 2025–2026, the report draws on a Visa-commissioned Yougov study and VisaNet data across travel, dining, retail and lifestyle categories. The headline number is hard to miss: individuals earning over Rs 10 lakh annually have nearly doubled from 69 lakh to 130 lakh, significantly expanding the country’s discretionary spending base.
But it’s not just about scale, it’s about behaviour. As consumers move up the affluence ladder, discretionary categories are taking a larger share of credit card spends, positioning cards as key enablers of premium, lifestyle-driven consumption.
The geography of wealth is shifting too. Affluence is no longer confined to metros such as Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, with cities like Ahmedabad, Surat, Jaipur and Lucknow increasingly mirroring metro consumption patterns.
The report highlights a clear pivot from ownership to access. More than 50 per cent of affluent consumers now use cards for elite memberships, while 7 in 10 are drawn to limited-edition drops and curated collections. Increasingly, luxury is defined by seamless access be it concierge-led travel or curated dining where time saved is as valuable as money spent.
Spending patterns reinforce this shift. Among the ultra-elite, travel accounts for 58 per cent of discretionary spends, far outpacing retail and luxury combined at 28 per cent. Cross-border spending penetration stands at 63 per cent, signalling a growing global outlook among India’s affluent.
Closer home, indulgence is becoming routine. Nearly 4 in 5 affluent consumers dine at premium establishments at least three times a year, while 1 in 4 visit luxury venues more than five times annually. Dining spends are also climbing, with Rs 20,000 emerging as a new entry-level benchmark per experience and Rs 50,000 marking premium territory.
Retail, meanwhile, is becoming more selective. Three in four affluent consumers make a high-end purchase at least once a quarter, while one in four shops premium every two weeks. Luxury retail intensity is also rising, with 2 in 5 consumers spending over Rs 5 lakh annually, and a smaller but significant segment exceeding Rs 10 lakh.
Technology and wellness are carving out new roles in this ecosystem. High-end gadgets now see average spends of Rs 60,000 or more per purchase, while ultra-elite consumers are eight times more likely to visit spas and show five times higher engagement with cosmetic stores than non-affluent groups.
The broader takeaway is structural. Affluent consumers are no longer buying products, they are buying ecosystems. Integrated experiences across travel, dining, wellness and payments are becoming central to how this segment lives and spends.
As India’s affluent base expands beyond metros and aligns more closely with global consumption patterns, the real opportunity lies not just in size, but in speed. For brands, the message is clear: relevance will be defined by how early and how seamlessly, they plug into this evolving lifestyle economy.
