Zomato's SRK ad: A high-budget diversion from real issues?

Zomato’s new ad doesn’t sell food — it sells grit. Or at least, that’s the idea founder Deepinder Goyal wants to plate up. In a glossy, star-studded campaign featuring Shah Rukh Khan, A.R. Rahman, Jasprit Bumrah, and Mary Kom, the brand swaps its trademark wit and delivery banter for a weightier message: greatness is delivered by effort.

But for some in the industry, the only thing being delivered is déjà vu. “It’s a bit of an overkill,” says Sandeep Goyal, ad veteran and founder of Rediffusion. “Nothing new said. No great new insight.”

That sentiment is echoed by others who find the campaign not just tonally distant from Zomato’s usual voice but creatively flat. “It’s a very generic ad — the kind where people say, ‘I hustle, I work hard,’” says Santosh Desai, CEO of Futurebrands. “That’s been done to death. It’s surprising coming from Zomato, whose past work had a distinct tone. This one is overly serious and honestly feels like something many other categories have done. The sweaty performances, the baritone voices, the supposedly inspiring lines — it’s just utterly generic. And more importantly, it’s completely off-brand for Zomato.”

While some have speculated that the timing of the campaign amid recurring conversations around rider protests, layoffs, and burnout in the quick commerce space may be strategic, Desai isn’t convinced it works as damage control.

“You can try to put a strategic frame around it if you want, but it doesn’t hold up,” he says. “If you have a real problem like rider protests — you can’t just throw some lofty messaging out there and expect it to go away. Deepinder usually addresses things head-on. But here, it’s vague. How does getting a bunch of stars to talk in gravelly voices fix any of that? It doesn’t.”

Still, the campaign has undeniable heft when it comes to budget and visibility. According to Yasin Hamidani, Director at Media Care Brand Solutions, the spend tells its own story — one of scale and ambition.

“The Zomato ad featuring Shah Rukh Khan, though produced in-house, reflects a high-budget campaign combining star power, top-tier production, and strategic media spend,” Hamidani says. “Typically, securing an A-list celebrity like SRK commands a fee of ₹5–8 crore, depending on usage rights and duration. Production costs for such a slick ad can range from ₹1–2 crore. On the media front — with high-frequency placements across YouTube, Instagram, and OTTs — the spend could conservatively fall between ₹5–10 crore. Overall, I’d estimate the ballpark budget at ₹12–20 crore.”

The absence of an external agency didn’t mean cost-cutting — instead, it meant reinvestment into scale and quality, he adds.

Ambika Sharma, Founder and Chief Strategist at Pulp Strategy, offers a slightly tighter estimate but agrees on the core cost drivers: talent and reach.

“The talent fee alone could sit between ₹6–8 crore, depending on usage rights and renewals,” Sharma explains. “Production, considering the sharp post and performance-driven aesthetic, would likely be ₹60–75 lakh. On media, they’ve gone deep digital — Instagram, YouTube, OTT integrations — so I’d estimate ₹4–6 crore in campaign deployment, bringing the total outlay to ₹11–15 crore.”

Interestingly, Sharma suggests that AI tools may have helped optimize production costs behind the scenes. “If AI is deployed intelligently — say, for background generation, lighting simulation, lip-sync correction, or VFX polishing — you could potentially reduce production costs by 25–30% without compromising output.”

But even as the ad draws criticism for lacking freshness or brand fit, not everyone sees it as entirely ineffective. “It reminded me of what Dream11 did with Aamir Khan, Ranbir, and the cricketers but Dream11 had a nice twist. This one doesn’t,” says Lloyd Mathias, investor and business strategist. “There’s no deep connect with Zomato as a brand. To me, it feels more like a personal statement from Deepinder Goyal — almost like he’s saying, ‘Hard work got me here too.’ But it doesn’t tie into food delivery at all.”

“This is not just a different campaign but a different brand positioning,” said Saurabh Parmar, Fractional CMO. “And a) why change what’s working? b) If you have to change it, it has to be based on a brand truth. No one really associates Zomato with hustle. Zomato’s branding has always been quirky, funny, and personal, focused on everyday life.”

In terms of brand building, Mathias remains unconvinced. “Sure, the star cast will help it go viral, generate buzz, get shared online — and that will have some impact. But in pure advertising terms, it doesn’t do much to build Zomato’s identity or relevance. It’s just noise.”

Still, he acknowledges a sliver of resonance in the tagline. “I think the line they’ve used at the end — ‘Fuel Your Hustle’ — will land well with millennials and Gen Z,” he says. “A lot of young people today are in startup mode, figuring life out. So the line will strike a chord, even if the relevance to food delivery is questionable. In a sense, every delivery partner is his own boss — a gig worker — so the message has a subtle fit there.”

Whether intentional or not, the campaign has also reignited conversations around Zomato’s past reputation strategies. As Mathias points out, the brand has historically embraced controversy — sometimes successfully. From its bold “food has no religion” stance in response to religious discrimination, to its quick retreat on the failed green-uniform-for-veg experiment, and even cycle-based deliveries framed as inclusive employment — Zomato has rarely shied away from heat.

But in this case, the approach feels more deflective than direct. “It seems more like a soft-focus attempt to bring the spotlight back to the Zomato brand,” he says. “That’s fair — most brands do it. But it’s not the sharp, issue-forward tone Zomato’s known for.”

Even the making of the film doesn’t fully escape critique. “It looks like they sourced a lot of footage and stitched it with some live shoot,” observes Naresh Gupta, co-founder of Bang in the Middle. “That’s how it comes across.”

And when it comes to message and brand alignment, Gupta sees a clear mismatch.

“There’s a big stretch here,” he says. “They’re trying to say people who hustle are the ones who use Zomato — that’s the only possible link. But otherwise, the ad doesn’t do much for the brand. It doesn’t carry the usual Zomato tonality either.”

He adds that the reputational issues plaguing Zomato — from layoffs to rider protests aren’t easily smoothed over with emotional storytelling.

“People have already been commenting about how Zomato treats its riders,” Gupta says. “Some delivery workers have come forward saying they’re unhappy with payments. Unless Zomato actually takes visible action on these concerns, they can’t escape that conversation. And I don’t see that effort happening yet.”

So while “Fuel Your Hustle” may strike a chord with India’s dreamers and digital natives, the ad’s effort to reframe Zomato as a champion of ambition has left the industry divided somewhere between admiration for its scale and skepticism of its sincerity.

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