Fortune Oil's Akshay Kumar & Indian Soldiers — Ghar Ka Khana, Ghar Ka Khana Hota Hai

There are brands that have taglines. And then there are brands that have truths. Fortune Oil had found its truth in 2014 — with a grandmother, a bowl of dal, and a hospital corridor — and had told that truth so powerfully that it became one of the most talked-about commercials in Indian advertising history. "Ghar Ka Khana, Ghar Ka Khana Hota Hai." Home cooked food is home cooked food, after all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7AROelV-iE

Three years later, in 2017, Fortune Oil returned to that same truth. But this time, the setting was not a hospital. It was an army camp. And the man standing in the middle of it was someone whose entire public image — the films he made, the causes he championed, the values he embodied — made him the only logical choice to tell this particular story.

His name, as the world knows it, is Akshay Kumar. His name, before the world knew him at all, was Rajiv Bhatia.

The Decision That Started It All: Choosing Akshay Kumar

The idea of bringing Akshay Kumar on board as Fortune Oil's brand ambassador did not come from the advertising agency. It came from the client — Adani Wilmar, the company behind the Fortune brand. Azazul Haque, Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy South, the agency that conceived and executed the campaign, was unambiguous about this when the campaign launched: "The idea of choosing Akshay Kumar as a brand ambassador came from the client and we loved it. A cooking oil brand choosing a male brand ambassador was a bold and progressive decision."

That boldness deserves a moment's examination. The edible oil category in Indian advertising had, for years, been dominated by a single visual grammar — mothers in kitchens, wives cooking for husbands, children approving of their parents' food choices. The category's default assumption was that the person buying and using cooking oil was a woman, and so the person speaking for cooking oil should address women. Fortune had already broken from that convention with the grandmother-and-hospital film. But bringing in one of Bollywood's most high-profile male stars as the face of a cooking oil was a different kind of statement entirely.

Angshu Mallick, COO of Adani Wilmar, explained the thinking: "Fortune Oils' communications has always been about connecting with our consumers on an emotional level. So when we were considering a brand ambassador, who better than Akshay Kumar. He is popular, likeable and relatable with people across different ages. Known to be a hardworking and conscientious person, Akshay epitomises all the values that Fortune stands for and is the perfect representative for our brand."

But it was not just Akshay Kumar the Bollywood star that made him the right fit. It was the specific, layered story that his life carried — a story that Fortune Oil would find a way to use with extraordinary precision.

The Story: Rajiv Bhatia Goes Back to the Kitchen

Before Akshay Kumar became one of the biggest names in Indian cinema, he was Rajiv Bhatia — a young man from Delhi who, before entering the film industry, worked as a chef. This is a documented part of his biography, well known to his audience and regularly referenced in interviews and public appearances. He had also, in the years immediately before this campaign, become closely and vocally associated with causes related to the Indian Army — a public positioning reinforced by several of his films that celebrated military themes and national identity.

These two facts — that Akshay Kumar was a trained chef before Bollywood, and that Akshay Kumar had a deep and visible affinity for the Indian Armed Forces — were the twin threads that Ogilvy South pulled together to create the campaign.

The two-minute film begins with Akshay Kumar at an army camp, spending time with jawans. The setting is warm and natural, drawing on his known association with and support for the Indian Army. He sits with the soldiers, talks with them, and asks them a simple question: what is it that you miss the most?

The answers come. Some soldiers say they miss their wives. Others say they miss their daughters. But there is one thing that draws an immediate, unanimous, and entirely unselfconscious response from all of them — ghar ka khana. Home cooked food.

This moment of collective longing — these men stationed far from their families, doing the most demanding job imaginable, bonding over the memory of their mothers' poori chole, their wives' dal, their grandmothers' rice — is the emotional beating heart of the film. Overwhelmed and humbled by the soldiers' sacrifice and their simple, unguarded expression of what they miss, Akshay expresses his wish to do something about it.

And then comes the reveal that makes the film entirely its own: "Rajiv Bhatia will cook for you."

The jawans are confused. Who is Rajiv Bhatia? Akshay then explains — that is his name before he became Akshay Kumar. That before the action films, before the stardom, before the fame, he was a cook. And he then proceeds to do exactly that. He ties on an apron, picks up a pan, and cooks the jawans a meal — not restaurant food, not catered food, but a just-like-home spread that includes the army men's own favourite dishes.

The film ends with Fortune's enduring positioning: "Ghar Ka Khana, Ghar Ka Khana Hota Hai."

Why This Story Worked

Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman and Creative Director of Ogilvy South Asia, who had also shaped the 2014 grandmother campaign, articulated the logic of the new film plainly: "The film continues on the theme of 'ghar ka khana' but this time we use jawans as they are the ones who miss ghar ka khana for long extended periods away from home. Akshay Kumar is a good fit because he has been a chef in his early days, before he became a Bollywood star. I am sure he will touch the hearts of people and strengthen Fortune Oil's connect with the people of India."

Azazul Haque of Ogilvy South went further, identifying the human truth at the campaign's core: "The premise that one misses home cooked food when away from home is a human truth. Because 'Ghar ka khana, ghar ka khana hota hai' is not just a positioning, but also an emotion."

The decision to use jawans as the vehicle for this emotion was strategically sound and culturally resonant. Soldiers in India carry enormous emotional weight in the national imagination. They represent sacrifice, service, and a particular kind of love — the love of country expressed through separation from everything personal. The act of leaving home, of staying away for months and years at a time, is their lived reality in a way that most people can understand but few truly experience. When these men say they miss home-cooked food, the audience does not just hear a food preference. It hears the depth of everything they have given up.

Akshay Kumar, the man who shared his Twitter account post at the time of launch — "Join me and @FortuneFoods as we salute the Indian soldiers by taking the taste of home to them. Kyonki #GharKaKhana ghar ka khana hota hai" — was not merely a brand ambassador amplifying a campaign. He was a person whose public persona, personal history, and established emotional equity with the Indian Army made the story feel authentic rather than manufactured.

5 Lessons Every Brand Should Learn from Fortune Oil's Akshay Kumar Campaign

1. The Right Ambassador Is Someone Whose Life Is Already Living the Brand Story

Akshay Kumar was not chosen because he was famous. He was chosen because his biography — former chef turned Bollywood star, passionate supporter of the Indian Army — was the story the brand needed to tell. The campaign did not have to construct a fictional connection between Akshay and cooking, or between Akshay and jawans. Both connections already existed in public knowledge. The lesson: the most powerful celebrity endorsement is one where the ambassador's real life is the advertisement. Fame alone does not tell a story. But a life that already aligns with your brand's truth tells it beautifully.

2. Find the People Who Feel Your Truth Most Intensely

Most people experience the longing for home cooked food occasionally — when they travel for work, when they study in another city, when they are briefly away from family. But Indian Army jawans experience it in its most extreme form, stationed away from home for months and years at a stretch. By choosing the audience for whom the emotional truth is felt most acutely, Fortune Oil gave its campaign a depth and specificity that a generic "we all miss home food" message could never have achieved. The lesson: find the people who live your truth at its most intense, and tell the story through their experience. Intensity of feeling creates intensity of connection.

3. A Bold Product Decision Unlocks Bold Creative Decisions

Making a male Bollywood star the brand ambassador for a cooking oil was, as Ogilvy's Azazul Haque acknowledged, a bold and progressive decision. But that boldness from the client — breaking the category's gender assumptions — was what unlocked the entire creative possibility of the campaign. Without that decision, the Rajiv Bhatia reveal, the cooking scene, the army camp setup — none of it would have been possible. The lesson: bravery in the boardroom is the prerequisite for brilliance on screen. When clients make bold category-defying decisions, they give their creative partners the freedom to make something genuinely original.

4. A Strong Brand Platform Grows Richer with Every Iteration

The 2014 grandmother film had established "Ghar Ka Khana, Ghar Ka Khana Hota Hai" as Fortune Oil's emotional home. The 2017 Akshay Kumar film did not abandon or replace that platform. It expanded it — same truth, new storyteller, new characters, deeper resonance. The grandmother had brought dal to a hospital. Akshay Kumar brought a home-cooked meal to an army camp. Both stories lived inside the same emotional universe. The lesson: a truly powerful brand platform does not need to be replaced. It needs to be explored. Every new campaign that adds a fresh story to an established truth makes the truth feel larger, not smaller.

5. Make the Reveal Earn Its Moment

The decision to withhold Akshay Kumar's real name — Rajiv Bhatia — until the moment when he announces he will cook for the soldiers is a piece of precise storytelling. The confusion of the jawans when they hear an unfamiliar name, followed by the explanation of who Rajiv Bhatia is and why that matters, gives the audience a small but genuinely satisfying surprise. It makes the celebrity endorsement feel like a plot point rather than a product placement. The lesson: in storytelling-led advertising, the reveal is everything. If you have a fact that can surprise your audience, do not lead with it. Build to it. Let the audience feel the pleasure of discovery rather than the burden of being told.

The Takeaway

"Ghar Ka Khana, Ghar Ka Khana Hota Hai" had already proven, in 2014, that it was one of the most emotionally resonant platforms in Indian advertising. The 2017 campaign with Akshay Kumar and the Indian Army jawans proved that it was also one of the most elastic. The same truth — that home cooked food carries a love and a warmth that no other food can replicate — found new characters, a new setting, and a new dimension in the sacrifice of the men who guard the nation's borders.

Fortune Oil did not use the Indian Army as a backdrop. It used the Indian Army's longing as a mirror — so that every Indian watching could see their own relationship with home cooked food reflected in the faces of men whose separation from home was more complete, more demanding, and more honourable than most of us will ever understand.

That is what made the campaign work. Not the celebrity. Not the patriotism. The truth — told, once again, with the kind of precision that only comes from understanding exactly who you are as a brand, and exactly what your audience already feels.