INDIGO APPOINTS DEEPTI SAMPAT AS VP – MARKETING & DIGITAL TO DRIVE BRAND AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE EXPANSION

IndiGo has named aviation marketing veteran Deepti Sampat as Vice President – Marketing and Digital, strengthening its leadership amid rapid growth and digital transformation. With experience at Air India and Vistara, she will lead brand strategy, digital marketing, and customer engagement as IndiGo sharpens its global brand ambitions in a fast-evolving aviation market.  

IndiGo, India’s largest airline by market share, has strengthened its leadership bench with the appointment of Deepti Sampat as Vice President – Marketing and Digital, marking a strategically timed move as the carrier navigates rapid expansion, a widening international footprint, and an ambitious digital transformation agenda. The announcement signals how India’s aviation sector—already one of the fastest-growing in the world—is now entering a new phase in which brand differentiation, digital-first engagement, and customer experience capabilities are emerging as core competitive assets alongside fleet scale and network economics.

For IndiGo, which has built its reputation on reliability, network density, and a sharp cost focus, the decision to deepen senior leadership capabilities in marketing and digital comes at a pivotal moment. The airline has accelerated its international expansion with new destinations and codeshare agreements, increased frequencies on high-demand routes, and aggressive aircraft additions that have pushed its operational scale far beyond pre-pandemic levels. As the carrier continues to serve a broader mix of domestic and global travellers, the strategic expectations from its brand and digital ecosystem have grown markedly, both in India and abroad.

Sampat’s remit will span brand strategy, digital marketing, and customer engagement—three pillars that increasingly define how airlines communicate value, simplify customer journeys, and drive loyalty in a digital-first era. The mandate includes strengthening consistency across consumer touchpoints, driving innovation in digital channels, and enabling scalable customer experience programs as the airline expands into newer geographies and traveller segments. Industry observers note that IndiGo’s consumer-facing narrative has historically prioritised operational reliability and affordability, and her appointment points to a potential shift towards a more holistic brand architecture—one that blends functional leadership with emotional resonance and global relevance.

Prior to joining IndiGo, Sampat served as Vice President – Marketing at Air India, where she played a critical leadership role during one of the most consequential brand transitions in Indian aviation history. Following the Vistara–Air India merger, she led B2C marketing, brand consolidation and consumer communications at a time when the Tata Group was rebuilding Air India’s brand identity, service architecture, and global positioning. The brand integration was a high-stakes undertaking that involved aligning two distinct aviation brands—each with its own heritage, service philosophy, and customer base—while also preparing the merged entity for international competition and renewed public scrutiny. Industry peers have credited that phase for reintroducing Air India to both Indian and global audiences with refreshed storytelling and a new creative lexicon.

Sampat’s trajectory in Indian aviation goes back to her years at Vistara – Tata SIA Airlines Ltd., where she spent more than five years shaping marketing programs during the airline’s critical growth phase. Vistara, at the time, was carving out a differentiated space in India’s aviation market by positioning itself at the premium end of the segment—championing service excellence, cabin comfort and a hospitality-driven consumer promise that challenged longstanding assumptions about domestic air travel. Under her leadership, the airline rolled out campaigns that garnered industry recognition for brand craft and customer experience storytelling, establishing Vistara as a formidable brand even as its market share remained more modest than its full-service peers. The campaigns were not only award-winning but also effective in articulating the brand’s raison d’être in a market dominated by price-sensitive decision-making.

With nearly three decades of experience across aviation, travel, hospitality, and digital-first consumer brands, Sampat is widely regarded within marketing circles for her ability to navigate the intersection of brand building, digital transformation, and customer-centric program design—an increasingly sought-after blend of capabilities across modern consumer industries. The aviation sector, in particular, has been undergoing a structural shift in how it applies digital engagement and data-driven personalisation. From ancillary revenue optimisation and mobile-first booking behaviour to real-time customer service and loyalty ecosystems, marketing is no longer just a communications function—it sits at the heart of revenue strategy, operational orchestration, and service differentiation.

IndiGo has been signalling its intent to amplify this dimension of its business. Over the past two years, the airline has relaunched loyalty constructs, invested in digital platforms, experimented with enhanced travel bundles, and expanded partnerships that go beyond traditional airline alliances. The carrier’s international ambitions have grown aggressively as well, with newer long-range destinations reflecting a gradual evolution from a largely domestic model to a hybrid domestic-international network. For an airline whose brand equity was originally built on the proposition of “on-time performance” and executional discipline, this next phase demands stronger emotional engagement, cultural fluency across global markets, and digital ecosystems that can support scale without compromising user experience.

Analysts say that Indian aviation is now entering a brand maturity phase similar to what international markets witnessed in the early 2010s. The domestic market has crossed the threshold where capacity and fares alone define the competitive landscape. With more young Indians flying frequently, outbound travel exploding, and business travel rebounding, airlines are redefining how they communicate value. Experience, design, digital convenience, and brand affinity are acquiring new weight. In this context, IndiGo’s move points to a broader shift in its long-term strategy—one that aims not just at operational leadership but at global relevance in brand stature.

The appointment also underscores the growing importance of leadership talent that can navigate both aviation’s operational rigor and digital-first consumer behaviour. Sampat’s experience across both legacy full-service models and premium-upstart brands gives her a vantage point into how consumer expectations in air travel are evolving. Her exposure to hospitality and travel adjacency sectors further strengthens her ability to look beyond the transactional nature of flying and toward the broader travel value chain—an increasingly important lens as airlines rethink ancillaries, partnerships, and loyalty revenue.

Market watchers note that the next era of competition for Indian carriers will likely extend into brand narratives that travel globally, partnerships that unlock feeder traffic, and digital journeys that simplify everything from planning to disruption management. In that world, IndiGo’s bet on a marketing leader with aviation pedigree, digital fluency, and storytelling acumen reflects a recognition that customer engagement is no longer a peripheral function but a strategic growth lever.

The addition of senior leadership at this juncture also signals IndiGo’s desire to shape perception as it scales internationally. Brand positioning is becoming critical as India emerges as one of the central growth theatres for global aviation, with its passenger numbers projected to double in the coming years. Domestic dominance, while valuable, is increasingly only one part of the equation—airlines are now expected to earn mindshare on global routes, attract international travellers, and present a consistent identity across cultures.

For now, the appointment of Deepti Sampat as Vice President – Marketing and Digital reflects a forward-looking leadership investment aligned with IndiGo’s ambition to evolve beyond being the country’s largest carrier to becoming a globally admired airline brand. It is a leadership chapter that could help rewrite how Indian aviation brands are perceived—in India and around the world. Global Entrepreneurs Today extended its congratulations to both Sampat and the IndiGo leadership team, wishing them continued success as the airline embarks on its next phase of growth and brand evolution.