Cricketer Virat Kohli retained the top position for the fifth consecutive year as the most valued celebrity in India with a brand value of $185.7 million, according to the Celebrity Brand Valuation Study 2021 by Duff & Phelps, A Kroll Business. Meanwhile, Ranveer Singh secured the second position with a brand value of $158.3 million, while Akshay Kumar landed at the third position with a brand value of $139.6 million.
Alia Bhatt ranked fourth with a brand value of $68.1 million, while MS Dhoni entered the top-five club this year with a brand value of $61.2 million. According to the study, the overall brand value of the top 20 celebrities in 2021 is estimated at $1.2 billion, an increase of about 12.9% from last year.
While prominent Bollywood celebrities continue to feature in our list of top 20 celebrity brands, this year we saw some notable changes, Aviral Jain, managing director, Duff & Phelps, A Kroll Business, said. “Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, and MS Dhoni witnessed a stellar jump in their brand values and they seem to have hit the right chords with the audience in 2021. We also saw more sportspersons rising in the top celebrity rankings, including the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Rohit Sharma, and PV Sindhu. This significant jump was because of the lesser competition from Bollywood celebrities since there were fewer theatrical releases in 2021,” Jain added.
The study provides a ranking of India’s most powerful celebrity brands based on brand values derived from their brand endorsement portfolios and relative social media presence. While Kohli led the list, fellow cricketers MS Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, Rohit Sharma came in at fifth, eleventh, and thirteen positions.
“Businesses and brands have heavily leveraged social media and other online platforms for brand endorsements this year, too, with below par weightage to traditional platforms. 2021 also saw the emergence and growth of several startups in the fintech and direct-to-consumer (D2C) business segments that significantly contributed to the overall number of brand endorsements undertaken by the top 20 celebrities. As traditional as well as upcoming industries adopted the digital route to continue engaging with their consumers, we observed greater traction in fintech, social media and OTT platforms, and D2C platforms from a celebrity endorsement standpoint,” Varun Gupta, head of Asia Pacific, valuation advisory services, Duff & Phelps, A Kroll Business, stated.
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