How Google Pay became India’s shorthand for UPI

On the ninth and final season of Koffee with Karan, Karan Johar told a story that was meant to be funny – and it is. But for anyone who studies brands, it was also a small masterclass in category ownership.

The counter that accepted only GPay

Johar and Kareena Kapoor Khan were at their children’s school sports day. They stepped outside the auditorium for a sandwich and coffee, assuming the refreshments were complimentary. The person at the counter had other plans: they had to pay.

Kareena had no cash. Johar had a card. Neither helped, because the counter accepted one payment method only. “Only GPay,” Kareena told him. The two stood there, briefly stuck, until another parent nearby offered to pay.

Things got more awkward. When they thanked him, Kareena assumed he might want a photograph and asked, “Would you like a picture?” A celebrity reflex, perhaps. But the telling detail for marketers is the first one: at a school event, the only way to pay was spoken about as GPay, not UPI.

When the brand name becomes the category

Google Pay runs on UPI, the Unified Payments Interface that powers a huge share of digital transactions in India. Yet in everyday conversation, many people say “GPay kar do” when they mean any UPI transfer, regardless of which app the other person actually uses.

This is one of the rarest outcomes in branding. It is the Xerox-for-photocopiers effect, the Band-Aid-for-adhesive-bandages effect. When a brand name becomes the default verb or noun for an entire behaviour, it has achieved the deepest kind of mental availability: it no longer competes inside a category; it is the category, in language at least.

Why this matters for brand builders

Nobody can force this outcome with a tagline. It happens when three things line up over time:

• Usage volume: the behaviour happens often enough that people need a shortcut word for it.
• Early dominance: the brand is the one most people first experience the category through.
• Lazy, natural language: users pick the shortest familiar name, not the technically correct one.

For a founder or brand manager in India, the lesson is not “try to become generic.” The lesson is to watch for the phrase your customers already use, and then feed it back to them.

So what should you do?

Listen to how customers describe the action in support chats, reviews and casual conversation. If they say your brand name as the verb, don’t correct them – reinforce it in your help pages, your onboarding and your tutorials. Use their words, not your category’s formal label.

And keep the double edge in mind. Owning the category in language is peak brand power, but it can be a legal headache. Trademark owners work hard to prevent their name from becoming the generic dictionary term, because that can weaken the mark. Google Pay would surely love the habit, while its lawyers keep a careful distance from the generic slide.

The Koffee with Karan anecdote is funny. But it is also evidence that brand building, done long enough, can change the words a whole country reaches for.

Source: Afaqs!