Mumbai: Indian cricket team skipper Virat Kohli has scored a hat-trick of being India’s most valuable celebrity. His brand value rose by 39 per cent to $237.5 million in 2019.
Duff & Phelps released key findings from the fifth edition of its Celebrity Brand Valuation Study 2019: New is Gold.
Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar has out thrown Deepika Padukone to claim the second spot in the list with a rise in brand value by 55 per cent to $104.5 million.
Meanwhile, the dynamic power couple, Ranveer and Deepika, claimed the third spot with a brand value of $93.5 million each. Deepika retained her most-valuable female celebrity status for the second consecutive year, whereas Singh moved up a spot, to now occupy the same position as Padukone.
The total value of the top 20 celebrity brands stands at $1.1 billion, with the top 10 contributing about 75 per cent of the total value, the report says.
“This year we saw the new generation celebrities make it to the top 20. Apart from the celebrities who were featured in last year’s study, this year, we have Ayushmann Khurrana (rank 10), Tiger Shroff (rank 17) and Rohit Sharma (rank 20) with a cumulative brand value of $87.5 million,” said Duff & Phelps mnaging director Aviral Jain.
The list being majorly dominated by Bollywood celebrities, sportspersons such as Virat Kohli, Mahindra Singh Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, and Rohit Sharma have also been featured.
Jain further added, “Even though brands changed their approach of sticking to established actors by roping in new faces, overall the industry managed to stay on course with the perfect blend of traditional and new.”
Duff & Phelps managing director and Asia Pacific leader for valuation services Varun Gupta said: “This is the dawn of a new era for the media and entertainment sector. The industry has seen experimentation, be it celebrities moving from traditional mainstream endorsements towards investments in brands, the rise of digital format advertising campaigns, or the onset of over-the-top (OTT) stars who are breaking new ground in endorsements.”
“Brands and celebrities have parallelly adopted the path of conscious advertising and filmmaking by choosing uplifting topics and making the narrative fewer windows dressed, an important facet for today’s Gen Y and Gen Z,” Gupta added.
