MUMBAI: Chinese handset manufacturer Vivo Mobiles recently ended its contract with Bollywoood actor Ranveer Singh and appointed Aamir Khan as its new India brand ambassador. 

Interestingly Khan has also been named as Vivo Pakistan’s brand ambassador, becoming the company’s first to hold the title in India's neighbouring country. Although the company did leverage Singh for promotions and TVCs in Pakistan, he was never the official brand ambassador there. 

The association is in line with Vivo’s recent launch of its new handset model, V9. The product has already launched in Thailand, Malaysia and India and is scheduled to go live in Pakistan sometime in April.

The company is likely to use the same campaigns in Pakistan as in India but will have a stronger digital and television push for marketing the new product. 

Khan's popularity in the Pakistani market could help the brand in creating a deeper personal connect with consumers in the country as he is widely acclaimed and followed. His recent movies like Daangal, 3 Idiots and Secret Superstar worked magic which even Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan or Ranveer Singh could not manage. Surprisingly he is also a name to reckon with in Vivo's home country of China where Dangal was a hit and helped the movie hit a collection of Rs 300 crore worldwide.

Vivo has always maintained that after China and Thailand, India is where it sees green.

In 2017, Vivo officially entered the Pakistani mobile phone market with its model Vivo V7 Plus and currently it is one of the fastest growing smartphone brands in the country. The company invested a start-up capital of $30 million in 2017 to boost the distribution and marketing and today competes directly with other Chinese mobile brands including Oppo, Xiaomi, and Huawei in the Pakistani market.