The Amul Girl, India’s most famous advertising mascot, has returned to the spotlight—this time not for her witty one-liners but over a viral claim about her inspiration.
A video by marketing consultant Dr Sanjay Arora suggested that the blue-haired, polka-dot wearing Amul Girl was inspired by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s sister, Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan. The reel, captioned “the queen of puns came from the sister of the king of vocabulary,” garnered millions of views on Instagram.
Shobha herself responded on X, saying:
“Yes, I was the first Amul baby. Yes, #ShyamBenegal took the photos. My sister Smita was in the 2nd colour campaign. We may have [inspired it]. But we don’t know.”
However, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), which markets Amul, denied the claim.
“We wish to clarify that the Amul Girl illustration is not influenced by Ms Shobha Tharoor. She was created by Mr Sylvester daCunha and illustrator Mr Eustace Fernandes,” the company said in a statement.
The Amul Girl was first created in 1966—a decade after Amul butter’s launch in 1956—when Sylvester daCunha and Eustace Fernandes developed the now-iconic “utterly butterly delicious” campaign with inputs from dairy visionary Dr Verghese Kurien.
Advertising pioneer Sylvester daCunha, who gave birth to the mascot, passed away in June 2023.
