Tukaram Mundhe has been making headlines in Maharashtra, and the latest names to enter his FDA watchlist are not restaurants or food businesses, but three Bollywood stars. Since taking charge as Maharashtra’s Food and Drug Administration Commissioner in May, Mundhe has led an aggressive enforcement drive involving hundreds of inspections and raids.
On August 11, the Maharashtra FDA issued show-cause notices to actors Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn and Tiger Shroff over their association with a Vimal Elaichi campaign, alleging indirect or surrogate promotion of Vimal Pan Masala, which is prohibited in the state. The actors have been asked to explain their role and remove promotional material related to the campaign from their social media handles. The action follows Mundhe’s July warning that celebrities endorsing food products would be held accountable for misleading or false advertising. But the Vimal case raises a more complicated question.
The product being shown in the advertisement is elaichi. The regulatory concern, however, is about what the Vimal name itself communicates, given its established association with pan masala. Built closely around celebrity influence, the case puts an old assumption under scrutiny. Is the endorser responsible only for the product named in the contract, or should they also examine the wider brand and the categories in which it operates?
For the advertising industry, the case brings celebrity due diligence into focus, but the issue is not new. The Advertising Standards Council of India’s guidelines already place a specific responsibility on celebrities because of the influence they have over consumers. Its framework says celebrity advertisements need to ensure that claims are not misleading, false or unsubstantiated, particularly where consumers could face financial or physical harm.
The regulator’s latest Annual Complaints Report also flags ‘product categories in violation of law’ and ‘lack of due diligence on claims’ as concerns in influencer advertising. That puts the current controversy in a broader context. The expectation is not simply that a celebrity should know what product appears in an advertisement, but that they should be able to establish the claims and comparisons they are endorsing can be objectively verified.
Manisha Kapoor, CEO & Secretary General, ASCI, says that responsibility becomes particularly relevant when a company operates across both permitted and restricted categories. A celebrity, in her view, cannot simply rely on the product description handed to them if the overall communication could create an association with a restricted product. “Celebrities have a responsibility to undertake due diligence on the communication they endorse, but brands and agencies also have a significant responsibility as the parties developing, approving and releasing the advertisement,” Kapoor says.
Surrogate advertising is also not determined merely by looking at a celebrity’s contract. It requires examining what the advertisement actually communicates. If a brand extension is genuine and the communication is confined to that lawful product, the position is different from a campaign that uses the extension to circumvent restrictions on another product.
Here, the legal landscape becomes crucial. Medha Banta, Senior Associate Lawyer at Khurana and Khurana, points to the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003, under which advertising tobacco products, including indirect promotion, is prohibited. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019, and the Guidelines for Prevention of Misleading Advertisements and Endorsements also contemplate responsibility on endorsers, particularly where an advertisement is misleading or attempts to circumvent a legal prohibition.
But neither framework, as described by Banta, makes a celebrity automatically responsible for every product sold by a company whose lawful product they endorse. “A celebrity can face regulatory scrutiny and potentially liability if an advertisement for an ostensibly lawful product is found to be, in substance, an indirect or surrogate advertisement for a prohibited product,” Banta says.
So, for the Vimal case, the presence of pan masala elsewhere in the company’s portfolio does not, on its own, answer whether the elaichi advertisement is surrogate advertising. The regulator would have to examine the campaign and determine whether the advertised product is genuine and independently marketed, or whether it is effectively being used to promote the prohibited category.
Even if an endorsement agreement contains an indemnity, that clause cannot stop a regulator from examining the celebrity’s role in the campaign. An indemnity can require the brand to cover certain losses or legal expenses, but it does not prevent regulatory action or remove the celebrity’s obligation to respond.
That makes the safeguards built into the endorsement agreement important even before a campaign goes live. Banta says celebrities and their representatives should look beyond the product being offered and understand the brand architecture around it, particularly when the company operates in regulated categories. They should also seek clear representations from the brand about compliance and disclosure of relevant brand extensions.
The protection, she argues, can go beyond a broad indemnity. Contracts could spell out product-specific warranties, regulatory-compliance obligations and disclosure requirements. They could also give the celebrity the right to suspend or terminate an endorsement if a regulator later alleges that the campaign amounts to prohibited or surrogate advertising.
Yet there is a limit to how much of this can be reduced to contracts and compliance checklists. Celebrity endorsements work because audiences transfer some of the trust they place in a public figure to the brand. That makes the choice of which brands to associate with a reputational decision as much as a commercial one.
Harish Bijoor, Business & Brand-strategy expert and Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc., argues that celebrities therefore need to look at the client before agreeing to an endorsement. The responsibility is particularly pronounced for film stars and sports personalities whose public standing becomes part of the value being sold through the campaign.
“Regulatory risk and brand reputation are key to brand personas who actually endorse in the market. It's extremely critical for individual stars, whether they be cricketers or sports stars of any other kind, Bollywood stars, film actors, to actually do a complete due diligence on the client that they undertake to work with,” Bijoor says.
This is well put in case when the campaign became a meme-fodder, with social media users sharing jokes and memes featuring Ajay Devgn and Shah Rukh Khan alongside paan masala imagery, including the familiar red-stained spit. The reaction showed how strongly consumers associated the stars and the Vimal name with pan masala. So, even when the advertisement featured only elaichi, the more familiar Vimal Pan Masala association remained hard to separate from the campaign.
Hence, how much information should be placed in front of a celebrity before they sign? And at what point should compliance become part of the commercial conversation?
Ashwin Bhadri, Founder and CEO of Equinox Labs, argues that compliance cannot sit outside the main endorsement discussion. The commercial conversation may typically focus on the creative idea, the celebrity’s reach and the economics of the deal. But a company operating in a regulated sector may require a different conversation before the campaign is made.
“Going forward, I think the compliance aspect of an endorsement needs to be discussed at the same table,” Bhadri says. Bhadri suggests that celebrities should ask basic questions about exactly what they are endorsing, the sectors in which the company operates and whether any products require additional approvals. Brands and agencies, meanwhile, need to be transparent about what can be said, what cannot be endorsed and what disclosures are required.
The role of enforcement plays a bigger role over here. A regulator can act after an advertisement appears, but by then the campaign may already have reached millions of consumers. Bhadri argues that the stronger safeguard lies earlier in the chain, with the brand, agency and celebrity each examining the campaign from their own position.
The case brings out an underpenetrated conversation in the ecosystem. The three parties do not possess the same information. The brand knows its portfolio and objectives. The agency develops the message and decides how the product is presented. The celebrity lends their reputation to the final communication. Treating any one of them as the sole compliance gatekeeper creates an unfair gap in the process.
The Vimal Elaichi notices will ultimately turn on the FDA’s assessment of the campaign and the explanations provided by the actors. The notices themselves do not establish that the celebrities have violated the law. But the episode has exposed a more complicated problem for celebrity advertising.
And, that is what the regulators, brands, agencies and celebrities now have to navigate. The debate is therefore not only about who should be held responsible after an advertisement is challenged. It is about whether the people involved had enough information, safeguards and checks in place to identify the problem before the advertisement even reached the public.
