The Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) has appointed Ravi Kumar Diwakar as Vice President, handing him charge of the industry body’s public relations function along with its media engagement and communications strategy.
Diwakar joins with roughly two decades of experience across journalism and corporate communications, with work spanning banking and financial services (BFSI), fintech, insurance, real estate and sports.
From newsroom to corporate comms
Before AMFI, Diwakar was Assistant Vice President, Corporate Communications at HDFC ERGO General Insurance, where he ran strategic PR and communications programmes for the insurer.
His earlier years were spent in journalism, reporting on businesses, markets, policy and regulatory developments, industry trends and corporate affairs, and interacting with senior business leaders and stakeholders across sectors.
That combination — reporter first, communicator second — is increasingly common at the top of India’s in-house comms teams. Editors know what makes a story land; that instinct is hard to teach and hugely valuable when a category is trying to explain itself to a mass audience.
What the mandate looks like
At AMFI, Diwakar’s brief covers strengthening the PR function, deepening media relationships and driving strategic communications for the mutual fund industry. A key part of the role is raising awareness and understanding of the industry’s evolving position within India’s financial and investment ecosystem.
The timing matters. India’s investment landscape is being reshaped by rising retail participation, shifting investor behaviour, improving financial awareness and the growing weight of mutual funds in household portfolios. That is a lot of new, first-time investors — and a lot of communication that has to be simple, accurate and consistent.
Why marketers should care
AMFI is not a brand in the conventional sense, but it is one of the most visible communicators in Indian financial services. Its category-level messaging has done what few industry bodies manage: turn a technical product into everyday vocabulary. Any move at the top of its comms function is worth watching for anyone working in BFSI marketing.
A few takeaways for practitioners:
- Category building beats brand shouting. When a whole industry needs education, an association-led narrative can lift every player in it — a model other sectors could borrow.
- Journalists make good comms leaders. Newsroom-trained hires bring news judgement, speed and an understanding of what an editor will actually run.
- Regulated categories need crisis muscle. Diwakar’s experience spans crisis communication and corporate reputation, both non-negotiable in financial services.
- Retail growth changes the audience. More first-time investors means comms has to move beyond business media into formats and languages new investors actually consume.
The bigger picture
Financial services communication in India is entering a phase where trust, clarity and volume all have to be managed at once. Retail investors are entering the market through digital platforms, absorbing information from creators as much as from mainstream media, and forming views quickly.
For an industry body, that means the PR job is no longer only about media relations. It is about consistent narrative-setting across every touchpoint where an investor forms an opinion — earned media, policy conversations, industry data and public education work.
Diwakar’s appointment signals that AMFI is investing in that capability at a senior level, at a moment when the mutual fund industry’s share of the Indian household wallet keeps expanding.
Source: MediaNews4U
