Asia-Pacific Power List 2020: Jaskaran Singh Kapany, Paytm

Jaskaran Singh Kapany

CMO
Paytm
India

Jaskaran Singh Kapany heads marketing at Paytm, India's largest mobile commerce company with over 350 million users, and has been responsible for making the brand a household name in India. Since 2015, he has been instrumental in spearheading Paytm’s overall brand strategy, planning and implementation and in orchestrating multi-million dollar deals like those struck with the Board for Control of Cricket in India and the Indian Premier League tournament that it runs. Today, Kapany oversees marketing for one of the top 15 most valuable brands in India, as per a BrandZ report. 

While Paytm was a big beneficiary of the demonetisation program (its Paytm karo or pay by Paytm has become a byword for online/digital transactions) from the Indian government four years ago, Kapany has ensured that the brand has continued to be relevant well after. Last September, it launched a fresh marketing campaign to highlight the capability to pay using its app from any QR code. Kapany then followed this up in January 2020 with a campaign directed at retailers, aiming to market the ease of use and interoperability of its QR code.

As the floodlights of cricket stadiums have been turned off with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, Team Paytm was able to launch an India Fights Corona campaign to help prevent and manage the spread of the virus. To reinforce its commitment, Paytm has invested in local innovators to overcome shortage of medical gear and collaborated with brands such as McDonald’s to give first responders free meals. The brand has also used its payments technology to be at the forefront of contactless digital payments during this time, mostly recently talking to 10 state governments to enable contactless ordering at restaurants.

While Paytm’s founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an outsized votary for his own brand and the digital payments space, Kapany has managed to build strong equity of his own. He regularly features on awards lists in India and is a regular on juries. The campaigns he has overseen have won awards at Cannes, Emvies, D&ADnd while taking home an Effie for Client of the Year to boot.

Kapany can be found on Twitter at: @JaskaranKapany