Brand Ambassador of RBI

The Reserve Bank of India — India’s central bank, established by the Reserve Bank of India Act of 1934 and beginning operations on April 1, 1935, headquartered in Mumbai — is the country’s most powerful financial institution, responsible for monetary policy, currency issuance, banking regulation, and financial system stability. Beyond its institutional regulatory functions, RBI has recognised that effective consumer protection in India’s rapidly digitalising financial ecosystem requires more than guidelines and circulars — it requires mass public communication that reaches every Indian citizen across every language, literacy level, and digital exposure, communicating urgent messages about banking safety, fraud prevention, and responsible financial behaviour. The result is one of India’s most impactful government public awareness programmes: RBI Kehta Hai — literally RBI Says — which has deployed Amitabh Bachchan and Neeraj Chopra as its most significant celebrity voices to carry the message of safe banking to the country’s 1.4 billion citizens.

RBI Public Awareness Campaign Ambassador Portfolio

Amitabh Bachchan — RBI’s Primary Public Awareness Ambassador

The Reserve Bank of India’s announcement on September 27, 2020 that it had engaged Amitabh Bachchan for its customer awareness campaign — aimed at preventing gullible account holders from being conned by fraudsters — was one of India’s most significant government-celebrity public awareness partnerships in the financial sector’s history. The context was doubly urgent: the COVID-19 pandemic had driven millions of Indian consumers onto digital banking platforms for the first time, simultaneously creating a vast population of new digital banking users and a surge in opportunistic online fraud targeting exactly these inexperienced users.

RBI’s campaign, running under the RBI Says public awareness initiative, focused on communicating the fundamental do’s and don’ts of safe banking transactions — not sharing OTPs, PINs, or bank account details with anyone under any circumstances; not clicking suspicious links in banking-related messages; immediately blocking cards if lost or compromised; and using only trusted banking applications. The campaign ran not only in English and Hindi but in multiple regional languages to ensure maximum reach across India’s linguistically diverse population.

Amitabh Bachchan’s selection for this campaign reflects the specific trust requirement that financial safety communication demands. His famous message from the campaign captures the urgency simply — the cost of awareness is hardly a penny, but ignorance can cost you hard-earned money. This formulation, in Bachchan’s unmistakable voice, creates the kind of memorable financial safety message that reaches audiences who might scroll past official RBI guidelines but will pause to listen to a voice they have trusted for fifty years of cinema and public life.

The campaign’s reach extended into one of India’s most significant financial communication achievements — RBI became the most popular central bank in the world on social media through the RBI Says awareness campaign, accumulating approximately 9.66 lakh Twitter followers, which exceeded the US Federal Reserve’s 6.64 lakh followers and the European Central Bank’s 5.81 lakh. This social media leadership for a central bank is remarkable and reflects how effectively the campaign content, amplified by Bachchan’s reach and credibility, created genuine public engagement with financial safety messaging.

During the COVID-19 lockdown period specifically, Bachchan promoted digital banking by urging people to adopt safe digital payment practices while avoiding unnecessary branch visits — aligning RBI’s message of banking safety with the pandemic’s public health requirements in a single communication.

Neeraj Chopra — RBI Kehta Hai Cyber Fraud Ambassador

RBI’s August 2021 deployment of Olympic gold medallist Neeraj Chopra for its cyber fraud awareness campaign — announced just days after Chopra returned to India as a national hero following his historic javelin gold at the Tokyo Olympics — demonstrated the central bank’s agility in capturing maximum cultural momentum for maximum public health communication impact.

The timing was precisely calculated. Neeraj Chopra’s return from Tokyo with India’s first-ever Olympic track and field gold medal had generated a wave of national pride and media attention that made him simultaneously the most searched and most trusted new public figure in India. Every Indian was paying attention to Neeraj Chopra in August 2021, and RBI’s recognition that this specific moment of maximum public attention could be deployed for cyber fraud awareness — reaching audiences who might otherwise not engage with banking safety campaigns — demonstrated sophisticated communication strategy.

The RBI Kehta Hai campaign featuring Chopra specifically addressed the growing epidemic of digital banking fraud — urging users to never share OTP, CVV numbers, or ATM PIN with anyone; to change online banking passwords and PIN numbers frequently; and to immediately block cards if lost, stolen, or compromised. The RBI’s official tweet framed the message with characteristic precision: RBI Kehta Hai… along with Neeraj Chopra. A little caution takes care of a lot of trouble.

Chopra’s alignment with the campaign’s values is more than opportunistic celebrity timing. His association with precision, focus on the target, and the achievement of difficult goals through careful preparation resonates with the campaign’s message that financial safety requires deliberate, careful attention to specific practices rather than reactive responses to crises. When India’s most precise athlete — a man whose gold medal was won by millimetres of technical perfection — urges citizens to be precise and careful with their banking information, the metaphor carries genuine persuasive weight.

RBI’s Multi-Channel Financial Literacy Mission

RBI’s public awareness campaign philosophy extends beyond its celebrity ambassadors into a comprehensive multi-channel communication strategy that deploys messages across television, print, radio, digital, and outdoor formats in over 22 Indian languages — recognising that financial literacy and fraud awareness cannot be delivered only to English-speaking urban consumers if their goal is genuine national impact.

RBI’s ambassador strategy is one of India’s most important government communication investments — operating not to sell a product but to protect citizens’ hard-earned money from the growing epidemic of digital financial fraud that accompanies India’s extraordinary digital payments expansion. With India processing over 100 billion digital payment transactions annually and millions of new users joining digital banking platforms each year, the communication mission of Amitabh Bachchan and Neeraj Chopra on RBI’s behalf is among the country’s most commercially impactful public service campaigns.