At INNOPROM India’s debut edition in New Delhi (September 9–11, 2026, Bharat Mandapam), InfluencerHai, a celebrity endorsement agency, connect actor Sidharth Nigam as a celebrity endorsement partner for National Centre RUSSIA, to spotlight its UniverMag pavilion at India’s first-ever hosting of Russia’s flagship industrial trade fair. This case study breaks down how the celebrity endorsement was planned, why it worked, and what other brands can take away from it.
Sidharth Nigam is an Indian actor known for roles in Dhoom 3 and the titular character in Aladdin – Naam Toh Suna Hoga, along with a string of popular television roles that built him a strong, mainstream fan base across India. That existing recognition is exactly why he was the right fit for this activation: audiences already trusted him, which made it easier for them to trust something unfamiliar, Russian culture and craft, introduced through his eyes.
INNOPROM India 2026 ran from September 9 to 11, at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. It was the first time this Russian industrial trade fair had ever been hosted in India, timed just ahead of the 18th BRICS Summit. The client was National Centre RUSSIA, an organization dedicated to presenting Russian culture, products, and heritage on international platforms. InfluencerHai worked as the celebrity endorsement agency behind the activation, bringing in actor Sidharth Nigam as the featured celebrity for the campaign.
This was India’s first time hosting INNOPROM, an industrial trade fair that has traditionally run in Russia and a handful of other regions. The larger exhibition itself was built around India–Russia industrial cooperation, with hundreds of exhibitors, trade discussions, and manufacturing partnerships across sectors like engineering, chemicals, and technology.
But tucked inside that heavily industrial setting was something quite different: National Centre RUSSIA’s UniverMag pavilion. Rather than pushing trade deals, this pavilion was designed to bring Russian products, crafts, food, and cultural heritage a little closer to everyday Indian visitors. It stood out visually too, built as an octagonal arched structure decorated with traditional Russian painting, a deliberate contrast to the rows of industrial booths around it.
The goal here wasn’t sales targets or trade numbers, and it wasn’t measured the way a typical B2B exhibitor’s stand might be. Instead, the objectives were centered on culture and connection. The campaign aimed to increase awareness of Russian culture in India, build genuine interest in Russian heritage among people who may never have encountered it before, and connect a mainstream Indian audience with the pavilion through a face people already recognized and trusted.
There was also a digital dimension to the objective. A physical pavilion, however well designed, only reaches the people who walk through Bharat Mandapam during those three days. The campaign needed a way to extend that experience onto social media, so people who couldn’t attend in person could still feel like they’d seen and understood what the pavilion was about.
As the celebrity endorsement agency for this activation, InfluencerHai handled the connection between Sidharth Nigam and National Centre RUSSIA from the very start. That meant more than just booking a celebrity appearance. It meant planning the celebrity activation from the ground up, aligning Sidharth’s involvement with the campaign’s cultural objective, and shaping the storytelling so the final content felt authentic rather than staged.
A lot of celebrity endorsements fail because they feel like an advertisement wearing a famous face. Our approach here was to avoid that entirely by giving Sidharth room to explore the pavilion as himself, rather than reciting a brief.
Celebrity endorsement works best when the person already has mainstream recognition and a loyal fan base, and Sidharth Nigam brought exactly that to this campaign. As an established actor with strong recall across Indian audiences, his involvement gave the pavilion instant visibility it wouldn’t have had on its own.
More importantly, his aspirational appeal gave instant credibility to a subject most Indian audiences hadn’t encountered before: Russian heritage and craft. When a well-known face shows genuine interest in something unfamiliar, audiences are far more likely to lean in and pay attention themselves. Sidharth also had the ability to draw mass attention well beyond a niche audience, something a smaller or more specialized influencer typically can’t do at the same scale, while still presenting the experience in a personal, relatable way rather than a distant, celebrity-only perspective.
Rather than a scripted endorsement, the content took a discovery-style approach from start to finish. Sidharth explored the pavilion the way any curious visitor would, walking through it, stopping at different craft stations, and reacting naturally rather than reciting rehearsed lines about the brand or the event.
This mattered because scripted celebrity content tends to feel distant and transactional, especially to younger, social-media-native audiences who can spot a paid message from a mile away. A native Hindi caption and event-specific hashtags kept things feeling personal and local, and the content directly tagged National Centre RUSSIA throughout the post, giving the client clear visibility without the tone ever tipping into a straight advertisement.
The content captured regional craftswomen and artisans at work, including a live Mikhailov lace-making demonstration and Dymkovo clay toy painting, two traditional Russian art forms that most Indian audiences would never have seen up close otherwise. Watching an artisan work in real time, rather than reading about the craft in a caption, gave the content a texture that felt genuine rather than curated.
The content also featured a limited-edition Indian-motif nevalyashka doll, Russia’s classic roly-poly toy, redesigned specifically to symbolize the cultural dialogue between India and Russia. National Centre RUSSIA had done this before for other international events, adapting the nevalyashka’s design for audiences in Uzbekistan and China, but the India edition carried particular weight given the scale and symbolism of this being INNOPROM’s first Indian outing.
Beyond the celebrity content itself, the pavilion offered a full cultural and commercial experience for anyone who walked through it. It brought together dozens of Russian manufacturers and artisans under one roof, alongside traditional food products like chocolate and gingerbread, and handmade crafts including lace and bags.
The design intent was clear: this wasn’t meant to feel like a typical trade booth handing out brochures. It was built around a genuine visitor experience, something people would want to walk through slowly, touch, taste, and photograph, rather than pass by on their way to the next industrial stall.
The pavilion’s real-world numbers back up the strategy behind it. Over 160 Russian manufacturers and artisans took part in the UniverMag showcase, and the specially designed Indian-motif matryoshka dolls sold out completely by the second day of the three-day event, a strong signal that the cultural angle resonated well beyond a passive audience.
The pavilion went on to become the single most-visited space at the entire exhibition, according to independent reporting, drawing personal visits from India’s Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and Russia’s Industry and Trade Minister Anton Alikhanov. Visitor demand was especially strong around Russian chocolate, gingerbread, lace, and handmade bags, items that gave people a tangible, take-home piece of the experience rather than just a memory of it.
Sidharth’s content extended the physical pavilion experience well beyond the exhibition venue itself. Using short-form video, the campaign told a cultural story that felt like genuine discovery rather than a promotional walkthrough, the same quality that made the in-person pavilion experience work so well.
This gave people who never set foot in Bharat Mandapam a way to experience the same curiosity and excitement online. For a three-day event with a physical attendance ceiling, that digital layer matters. It means the campaign’s reach wasn’t capped by how many people could physically walk through the pavilion during those three days, but extended to anyone scrolling past the content afterward.
Content performance metrics, engagement numbers, and reach figures for this specific activation are still pending from the client and creator side, and we’d rather leave this section honest than fill it with placeholder numbers. What we can point to with confidence is the qualitative impact: a cultural discovery format that clearly resonated with both in-person visitors and the wider online audience, backed by the strong pavilion-level traction covered in Section 9.
A few things stood out from this activation that are worth remembering for future campaigns. Authentic discovery consistently outperforms a straight celebrity endorsement message, audiences respond better to genuine curiosity than to a rehearsed pitch. Cultural content can sit comfortably alongside an industrial or business event without feeling out of place, sometimes it’s the contrast that makes it stand out even more. Celebrity-led storytelling can humanize even a government-backed cultural showcase, turning an institutional presence into something relatable. And offline experiences, when captured well, can earn genuine extended digital visibility that outlasts the physical event itself.
This campaign is a good example of what InfluencerHai does as a celebrity endorsement agency: connecting the right celebrity with the right cultural moment, and letting the storytelling do the rest rather than forcing a script onto it. As an influencer marketing agency with experience across both creator and celebrity activations, InfluencerHai brings that same range to every campaign.
For brands working in tourism, culture, or event marketing, the lesson is simple: a well-matched celebrity endorsement, given room to feel authentic rather than scripted, can turn a physical activation into something people remember, talk about, and share, long after the event itself ends.
