During a recent India-Australia T20 match, viewers ordering food may have noticed their delivery app’s tracker (usually an icon of a biker) changing into a cricket bat with a tricolour trailing behind it. Below the tracker, a banner blinked: “Score big this match week — get 20 per cent off on biryani!” During IPL 2025, Swiggy introduced “Swiggy Sixes”, unlocking discounts for every six scored. The platform had previously turned its delivery tracker into a dragon, as part of a Game of Thrones tie-in. Recently, Zepto collaborated with Prime Video for a Family Man (Season 3) promotion.

From Swiggy and Zomato to Paytm, Ola, Uber, Dunzo, Zepto, BigBasket, Instamart, BookMyShow and Oyo, every digital platform now uses its interface as a potential marketing platform.

Semiotics — the study of signs and symbols and how they are interpreted — has always shaped brand perception and consumer behaviour. The modern Indian app economy represents an advanced approach to digital branding, where design and data converge to create a dynamic brand communication strategy.

Interface as market

A decade ago, Indian apps were mere utilities: a clean search bar, a payment gateway, a tracking map. Today, as sophisticated marketing platforms, every pixel is potential real estate. When users open an app, they encounter a carefully curated commercial environment: banners, pop-ups, and mascots competing for attention.

Swiggy carries small banner ads for partner restaurants and FMCG brands. Zomato places sliders promoting beverage tie-ins just before checkout. Paytm hosts its own financial products, such as credit cards, insurance, and gold savings, alongside mini-games sponsored by partner brands.

Grocery apps push sponsored listings for biscuits, detergents, or even onions — much like supermarket shelf battles for prime placement.

On many platforms, especially websites, digital ads are clearly distinguishable as ads. But on apps like Amazon, sponsored items appear inside the search feed; they are marked as ‘sponsored’, yet disrupt the organic order and may often worsen the user experience.

In contrast, when an app decorates its own storefront — highlighting a discounted product or a partner brand — there is no obligation to label it as advertising, even though it serves as a profitable tie-in for the platform.

Beyond traditional ads

Digital platforms create comprehensive brand experiences through their interfaces. When Ola’s splash screen dons festive colours or Google Pay gamifies its payment experience with scratch cards and cashback, these are branding techniques designed to create emotional connections.

During Diwali, Instamart may burst into gold fireworks with “light up your kitchen” offers. BookMyShow tweaks its banner palette to match the IPL team you support. The interface adapts to the cultural calendar, blending national emotion, personal convenience, and commercial intent. This is contextual branding powered by data and timing.

According to industry estimates, India’s in-app advertising market is set to reach about $5 billion by 2030.

For many platforms — especially in delivery or ride-hailing — whose core margins remain thin, advertising and partnership branding have become crucial revenue streams.

Food apps monetise banner space with featured placements for partner restaurants. Payment app PhonePe promotes mutual funds and credit cards from partner institutions. Ride-hailing apps Uber and Ola cross-promote fuel companies, credit cards, and even travel insurance on their ride summary screens. Each nudge, icon, or gamified notification is designed to capture micro-moments of user attention and convert them into value.

Native interface

A more subtle marketing approach is emerging: native interface branding. This integrates advertising directly into the user experience.

Zepto’s speed meter is a branding claim disguised as UX. BookMyShow’s pre-movie partner banners blend seamlessly with the ticket interface, normalising sponsor visibility. Oyo’s “Smart Stay” badges, likewise, blur the line between functional design and marketing.

What was once an app function is now an opportunity for storytelling.

Psychology of presence

Digital platforms are leveraging personalisation to create more engaging user experiences. The modern Indian consumer spends over five to six hours a day on her phone, interacting with the same handful of apps. That intimacy, like a birthday greeting or preference recall by the app, creates fertile ground for micro-level branding.

It’s algorithmic empathy. These cues make the interface feel alive — almost sentient. They make brands feel present, friendly, and indispensable. In effect, branding becomes a relationship rather than a message. The app’s tone, colours, and functional minimalism become its personality traits.

The app’s usage is related to the user’s personality, too. Studies show that even broad categories of app use can predict one’s personality with over 85 per cent accuracy. It also raises questions about data transparency — users rarely know how much of their micro-interactions are being harvested and monetised.

India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 requires clearer consent and purpose limitation, but users still know only partially how much behavioural data apps infer and monetise.

Blurring boundaries

What’s also fascinating is that apps are no longer just hosting other brands — they’re becoming brands for their partner brands to borrow equity from. When a soft drink company partners with Zomato for a co-promotion, it’s tapping into Zomato’s user trust and frequency of engagement. When PhonePe offers discounts on streaming service subscriptions, it’s lending its habitual reach to entertainment brands.

In this sense, digital platforms are becoming meta-brands — containers that shape how other brands are experienced. It’s not unlike how malls functioned in the 2000s: a physical infrastructure that assisted commercial discovery. That experience, in the digital medium, is more trackable and tweakable.

Design as advertising

There is, however, a thin line between clever branding and cognitive overload. As apps try to pack every interaction with commercial intent, they risk exhausting users.

Markets with longer app histories have already seen this play out: in China, for instance, WeChat had to scale back its in-app promotional clutter after user pushback; and in the US, several fintech and delivery apps have shifted to cleaner interfaces to combat “banner fatigue”.

Good branding thrives on subtlety. As users grow more discerning, the winners are often those who can embed branding invisibly. The interface should feel helpful first and commercial only in hindsight.

Afterword

This is more than a marketing trend and almost a cultural transformation. The smartphone app is India’s new semiotic laboratory, where commerce, identity, and culture converge. These digital interfaces don’t just communicate, they also create meaning. The battleground of branding has quietly shifted. It’s no longer the billboard or TV screen, but the inch of glass under your thumb.

(Manoshij Banerjee is an independent consultant on digital culture and behaviour, and Mohammed Shahid Abdulla is a faculty member at IIM-Kozhikode)

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Published on December 1, 2025