Cheering Mandanna & Mandhana

Rashmika Mandanna today endorses McDonald’s, Dabur Honey, Cashify, Kalyan Jewellers, and Bisk Farm among other brands. In 2023, she was made the first Indian ambassador for Japanese fashion brand Onitsuka Tiger and walked the runway for them at the Milan Fashion Week. Rashmika is also the face of American streaming service Crunchyroll, for which she presented an award at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards in Japan last year.

As of today, Rashmika is one of the most followed South Indian actresses on Instagram with more than 42.6 million followers. Her account gained 469,900 new followers in just the last four weeks. Rashmika gets an impressive 753,100 likes per Instagram post and her content — mostly on beauty, art and artists, cinema, and other actors/actresses — averages 3,100 comments per post. Pretty impressive, no?
 

Rashmika made her acting debut with the Kannada film Kirik Party (2016), and had her first Telugu film release in the romantic comedy Chalo (2018). A turning point in her career came with the romance Geetha Govindam (2018), which won her many awards and accolades. Her first Tamil release came in the action drama Sulthan (2021). Rashmika then played the leading lady in the wildly successful action film Pushpa: The Rise (2022), co-starring Allu Arjun. She was also the female lead of the highest-grossing Ranbir Kapoor action thriller Animal (2023). Her performances in Goodbye and Mission Majnu were kind of lukewarm but much is expected of her portrayal of Yesubai Bhonsale opposite Vicky Kaushal’s Sambhaji, in the Hindi historical drama Chaava, which releases later this year.
 

And now to Mandhana — yes, Smriti Mandhana, who made newspaper headlines as the winning captain of the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the recently concluded Women’s Premier League 2 (WPL2). Last year, she stole the thunder in the inaugural WPL auctions as Royal Challengers Bangalore pipped Mumbai Indians in a bidding war to buy the India vice-captain for Rs 3.40 crore. India skipper Harmanpreet Kaur though came much cheaper for Mumbai Indians at nearly half the price of Mandhana at a piffling Rs 1.80 crore.
 

Winner of the International Cricket Council (ICC) Rachael Heyhoe-Flint Awards for Best Female Cricketer of the Year in 2018 and 2022, she was also the ICC Women’s T20 Player of the Year in 2021. Mandhana’s first breakthrough in her cricketing career came in October 2013, when she became the first Indian woman to achieve a double-hundred in a one-day game. Playing for Maharashtra against Gujarat, she scored an unbeaten 224 off 150 balls in the West Zone Under-19 Tournament. After that there was no looking back.
 

She became, in February 2019, the youngest T20I captain for India, at age 22 years and 229 days, to lead the women’s team against England in the first T20I in Guwahati. Harmanpreet Kaur had been ruled out for the three-match series with an ankle injury, and the mantle of leadership was instead donned by the young Mandhana.
 

Mandhana started her endorsement journey with Bata in 2018. By 2021 she had graduated to Nike. In 2023 alone she became the face of Wrangler, SG, PNB Metlife, Herbalife Nutrition, and MadRabbit. Mandhana also endorses Wrangler, Red Bull, Gulf Oil, and Mastercard — a total of more than 15 brands overall. Her social media performance is also pretty good — her digital platforms saw more than 61 million engagements last year and the swashbuckling batter has a combined following of more than 14.8 million, securing her 9th spot among all female athletes in the world, making her the only women cricketer to be among the top 10 athletes.
 

Both Mandanna and Mandhana are relatively new additions to the growing tribe of brand ambassadors in India. Is there a reason why more and more brands are flocking to sign on these two young ladies? Well, to start with, both of them have very high scores on the key personality attribute “authenticity”, according to the yet-to-be-released 2024 research findings of the Indian Institute of Human Brands (IIHB).
 

Authentic people are those who stay true to themselves, their values, and their beliefs. They are comfortable in their own skin, and they don’t try to put on a façade to impress others or fit in with the crowd. True “authentics” are honest, transparent, courageous, and open —hence are respected and admired. Both Mandanna and Mandhana seem to be sitting very high on this key trait in the research feedback. And that is perhaps the single-most important driver for their rising popularity with brands. Yes, the fact that they are earthy, likeable, relatable, and convivial.

The writer is chief mentor, IIHB. He holds a PhD in human brands