Poulomi Roy reveals the marketing strategy driving Joy Personal Care’s WPL campaigns

When Joy Personal Care started associating with sports, the brand noticed a clear gap in how women are celebrated in India. While women have strong icons in individual sports like badminton and wrestling, team sports, especially cricket, have largely been celebrated only in the men's format, despite cricket being the country's most loved sport. Poulomi Roy, CMO of Joy Personal Care (RSH Global), explains that as a society, India is comfortable celebrating women in arts and entertainment, but seeing women play aggressive, competitive cricket hasn't been normalised enough. "That insight became a trigger for us as a brand. We believe brands can spark conversations and challenge conditioning, and the lack of celebration for women's cricket was an important conversation to lead," she says. 

The announcement of the Women's Premier League came at the same time Joy Personal Care was already questioning this imbalance, making it a natural and timely fit.

The WPL's growth since then has exceeded early expectations. The inaugural season in 2023 pulled in around 50 million viewers across TV and digital in its first 14 matches. By 2025, viewership had surged to 103 million TV viewers in the first 15 games, with the opening match alone drawing close to 30 million television viewers. 

India's Women's World Cup victory in November 2025 added momentum, with the final attracting 185 million viewers on JioHotstar and matching the audience of the men's T20 World Cup final from the previous year. This helped build commercial confidence. From roughly 50 brands in the first season, the WPL expanded to over 70 advertisers across 45 categories by 2025, with central sponsorship revenues doubling from around Rs 50 crore in 2023 to over Rs 100 crore by 2025.

Joy Personal Care has been associated with WPL teams, including UP Warriorz (in 2026), Delhi Capitals (in 2023), and Gujarat Giants (in 2024), since the tournament's first season. Roy clarifies that the decision was not driven by reach or visibility alone, since the brand already had scale through other media properties. What mattered was building a strong narrative and a consistent brand voice around women, sport, and cricket. The brand's campaign approach has evolved each year to address different stereotypes. In 2026, Joy launched Behenhood, a campaign triggered by the visible camaraderie among players during the Women's World Cup. Roy notes that while concepts like brotherhood and bromance are widely celebrated, there was a need to spotlight the strong bonds that exist among women, whether as teammates, friends, sisters, colleagues, or partners.

In the interview, Roy discusses how the brand measures the partnership's impact through on-ground activations and sampling in markets like Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, why WPL delivers different brand equity compared to IPL, and how Joy Personal Care plans to adjust its investment as the league continues to expand with new franchises and wider geographic reach over the next three to five years.

Edited Excerpts:

Joy Personal Care has partnered with WPL teams like Delhi Capitals, Gujarat Giants and UP Warriorz since its inaugural season. What initially drove the brand to align with women’s cricket and these teams specifically? What consumer insights indicated that WPL’s audience was a strategic fit for the brand's products? 

When we started associating with sports, we noticed a clear gap in how women are celebrated in India. While women have strong icons in individual sports like badminton and wrestling, team sports, especially cricket, have largely been celebrated only in the men’s format, despite cricket being the country’s most loved sport.

As a society, we’re comfortable celebrating women in arts and entertainment, but seeing women play aggressive, competitive cricket hasn’t been normalised enough. That insight became a trigger for us as a brand. We believe brands can spark conversations and challenge conditioning, and the lack of celebration for women’s cricket was an important conversation to lead.

The announcement of the Women’s Premier League came at the same time we were already questioning this imbalance, making it a natural and timely fit. The launch of the WPL, along with discussions around equal pay, reinforced our belief that women’s cricket was at a turning point and would grow over time.

Our association with WPL teams was not driven by reach or visibility alone. We already had scale through other media properties. What mattered was building a strong narrative and a consistent brand voice around women, sport, and cricket, sometimes through a light, cultural lens and sometimes by reflecting on how society views women in sports.

Can you walk me through how the creative and campaign approach has evolved from 2023 to 2026’s Behenhood and other initiatives? 

Our campaign approach has evolved each year by addressing different stereotypes around women in sports. Earlier, we created a rap-based campaign that challenged the notion that women athletes are tomboyish, unfeminine, or unconcerned about their appearance. Through humour, we pushed back against these labels, showing that strength, femininity, and individuality can coexist.

In 2026, Behenhood was triggered by a visible shift we observed during the Women’s World Cup, particularly the way players supported, celebrated, and uplifted one another on the field. This stood in contrast to common stereotypes that portray women as overly competitive or unsupportive of each other.

While concepts like brotherhood and bromance are widely celebrated, we felt the need to spotlight the strong bonds that exist among women, whether as teammates, friends, sisters, colleagues, or partners. Behenhood became a light-hearted, non-preachy way to celebrate this collective spirit and the idea of women bringing out the best in each other.

Social media was the natural medium for this narrative, allowing the idea to extend beyond cricket into everyday life; at home, at work, and within communities.

Could you also walk me through the media mix that works best? 

For the WPL partnership, our media mix has primarily focused on social media and on-ground activations. Social platforms are used to amplify the campaign narrative and behind-the-scenes content, while on-ground activations help drive direct engagement, trials, and recall. This combination has worked effectively to support both storytelling and consumer interaction.

What role do celebrity athletes like Deepti Sharma, Harleen Deol and others play in shaping campaign narratives? 

During the WPL, our association is primarily at a franchise level rather than focused on individual athletes. That said, players like Deepti Sharma, Harleen Deol, and others now have significant fan followings and are finally receiving recognition beyond core cricket audiences. More importantly, they inspire millions of women to see sports as a viable career choice, which is a powerful shift.

From a campaign perspective, having popular players within a franchise naturally helps strengthen reach and association. In teams like UP Warriorz, the mix of Indian and international players brought diversity, energy, and authenticity, especially on social media, where fans enjoy seeing their candid, fun side.

The real impact, however, comes from how the athletes engage with the idea. When the campaign is strong, like the rap-based campaign we executed, the players genuinely enjoy participating because it’s different from the usual brand formats they’re offered. Each player brings her own fan base, and together that creates a more holistic and engaging narrative. Ultimately, while popular faces add value, the strength of the idea remains the most important driver.

Have you observed that associating with a women’s sports league rather than a men’s platform delivers different brand equity? If yes, how?

Associating with women’s and men’s leagues delivers different kinds of brand equity, and we look at them very differently. The IPL is a massive media property for us. At Joy’s current stage, scale and reach are critical, and IPL offers unmatched visibility and top-of-mind recall over two-and-a-half months, driven by collective national viewership across TV and digital. An association with an IPL franchise delivers immediate brand recall and supports business objectives like penetration and distribution.

From a business standpoint, IPL also helps because Joy is a mass brand across general trade, modern trade, e-commerce, and quick commerce. General trade and distribution networks are still largely male-dominated, and IPL’s reach with this audience strengthens dealer and distributor recall. Television reach of over 326 million households, with nearly 42% women viewership, makes IPL a powerful household property for a growing brand like ours.

WPL, on the other hand, plays a very different role. It is a narrative-driven association rather than a pure visibility play. Through WPL, we champion conversations around women and women’s sport, aligning with what young and contemporary India is increasingly talking about. While IPL drives scale and business impact, WPL helps us build cultural relevance and a strong social narrative around the brand.

Can you share any measurable growth, be it brand awareness, sales uplift, social engagement, that you attribute directly to the WPL partnership?

The WPL partnership has delivered strong on-ground impact, particularly in key markets like Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Our association with the UP Warriorz included a local activation called the Warriors League, which featured corporate and college-level cricket engagements with mixed-gender and all-women teams.

Through these activations, we carried out extensive sampling, trials, and product gifting, which significantly improved brand recall in these regions. It also created an incremental consumer base in markets where our products were already well accepted.

From a business perspective, the partnership gave our sales teams stronger leverage on the ground and supported the launch and introduction of new products. While the impact is cumulative rather than immediate, the WPL association has clearly contributed to deeper engagement, higher recall, and sustained momentum in priority markets.

As WPL grows, what are your strategic ambitions for this partnership in the next 3–5 years?

Over the next three to five years, our approach will be closely tied to how the WPL evolves. The league is clearly growing, with new franchises coming in, more matches, and a wider geographic spread, similar to the IPL model, which naturally increases exposure and impact.

As the tournament scales, we will calibrate our level of investment accordingly. Our focus will be on identifying the right markets, understanding where the partnership can deliver the most value, and deciding how best to leverage the platform each year. At this stage, it’s a growing property, and our strategy will continue to evolve in step with its expansion.