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Rajesh Radhakrishnan, CMO and founder of Vritti Group, is a guest on the Mediacast podcast. Vritti provides marketing solutions in tier 2, 3, and 4 markets in India. They specialize in reaching small towns and rural areas through their audio a la bus stand product. They have 575 bus stations across 8 states with an average footfall of 1.5 crore per day. Vritti offers centrally controlled and managed advertisements that can be dynamically changed. They also have an in-house creative team and partners to create localized jingles and attention grabbers. Hello and welcome to this episode of Mediacast, the podcast series from Mediabase.com. I'm your host and friend Praveen Raj Chawla and with me today is this amazing professional. This is somebody who is not only an expert but also a thought leader in marketing and empowering marketing, especially across the high growth tier 2, 3 and 4 and even beyond that is possible for markets of India. Please join me as I welcome as my distinguished guest on this episode, Rajesh Radhakrishnan, CMO and founder of Vritti Group. Rajesh, welcome to Mediacast and thank you ever so much for your time. Thank you, Bhawanji. Thank you for having me here. It's been really very interactive session with you earlier and now I would like to have more interaction. Thank you ever so much. In fact, I would also like to thank and this is my fault, I like to appreciate the work of good people who make good things happen and sometimes they go unappreciated. So I must say a very big warm thank you to Prabodh Menon. Prabodh is your comms agency head of Alchemist PR. So thank you Prabodh also. Rajesh, you said that you're looking forward to an interactive session. I am looking forward to an enormous amount of insights and inputs and really I literally mean this word when I say it, guidance for marketers across India and even beyond who are looking at India and wanting to take their goods and services and offerings to the back of beyond literally. And that's what Vritti Group actually enables. So Rajesh, before we get on to the amazing work and the services at Vritti Group, Vritti Solutions, Vritti Media, call it what you will, there is so much that Vritti really offers. I want to know about your initial years, right? I mean, you set up Vritti about 18 years ago, right? 18 years, 7 months, maybe close to 19 years now. And you decided on Vritti after having worked with 3 or 4 top companies. Which ones were they? IT&T, Webpro, Satyam and PCS, all high tech companies. From there to the back of beyond that you are empowering for marketers across the world today, I mean, when I say across the world, I mean every marketer in India has now, thanks to Vritti Media, the opportunity to reach the back of beyond. So why did that come up? So Vritti formation happened in 2005 and we, it was a partnership company, in 2007 we formed a limited company, okay, along with my partner Virender Jamdade, who was the CEO of the company. And our whole aim was to give solutions which are not common, because those days were beginning of technology. And we know that technology can play a very vital role, if it is in a niche area, you know, you cannot be generic to everybody. And there was a specific set of customers, okay, who are looking for different solutions. And over there, we came with the state transport, okay, who was looking to buy some technology solutions on passenger information system. Right, right. Let us build into the Vritti offerings, right. And before that, let me ask you one thing first, okay. India is a huge, huge, huge country and, you know, most brands, most FMCG brands, generally when they come in, you know, especially the premium ones, of course, they look at the tier one markets first, and then they move on to tier two. I want to ask you, you know, if you look at all the marketers across the country, the high growth, future high growth areas and markets, which will be the dream destination for India as an economic power later, right, in the years to follow. All of that growth is going to come from which markets, tier three and four, am I right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. And further it will go to rural. Correct. So, but the difficulty here is that marketers do not know how to get there, right. When you look at the media buying plan of an FMCG, big FMCG media buying agency, it is mostly, okay, if I want to reach the back of beyond, I will, and I am an FMCG producer or seller of goods, okay. I will take a couple of top film stars because, you know, their relevance is across the length and breadth of the country. I will go to linear TV, I will go to print, I will, of course, go to digital also. But the lion's share of the marketing budgets are actually devoted by such big companies to the traditional media, correct me if I am wrong. Absolutely. So, what really happens is that the bang for the buck really is not there, right. And I think Briti provides, to my mind, the kind of solutions that are like providing reach at frequency rates, right, because of the kind of markets that you take your advertisers to and the kind of messages that you give out, which are not just for customer awareness, but also for customer acquisition, on a rotating high refresh rate, in terms of new eardrums, new eyeballs, and new people. Now tell me, in fact, tell the marketers who are listening to this episode, what Briti media, Briti solutions provides to marketers, in short, your the first slide and the first five bullet points of your PowerPoint presentation as it were, as a guidance to marketers like a cut and keep in the digital space. Briti iMedia's audio a la bus stand is a product which is a pioneer created by Briti to help brands reach out to small town and rural markets and more so tier 2, tier 3 and tier 4. These bus stands are actually interstate bus services traveling from one city or one village to another. Correct. Okay. Okay. So how do you print like what are the number of bus stands, even if it's the back of the envelope number that you might remember that you have 575 bus stations, okay, covering eight states, 575 bus stations covering eight states. Okay. Which ones are these? Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Punjab, Himachal, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat. Lovely. So a lot of the Hindi speaking markets, the North Indian markets, and then you also have Karnataka, you have Goa. And yeah, that's wonderful. So you have these eight states and these 575, 575 bus stations, right, across these eight states, what is the kind of footfalls or you know, the kind of passenger traffic that moves through these and how do you measure and provide information to the marketers who invest? Average footfall per day across these eight states, across 575 bus stations is 1.5 crore per day. Wonderful. And a high refresh rate. Absolutely. The floating population we have and every half an hour, people change. And every time the ad is heard by a new set of people. So the ads are actually in, are playing out on screens, could be small or large televisions or plasmas or whatever, is that it? And then there is audio that goes with it. The medium works like this, there is an announcement happening. In between announcements, we run ads and these advertisements are completely centrally controlled and centrally managed, technology driven. And you can change the ads very dynamically, okay, and you have full control in terms of, you know, in terms of people listening, okay, at what time, which ad to be run and every station can have different set of ads. Wonderful. You know, I saw one little video that Prabodh of your PR agency had shared with us. It was about a little campaign or a little ad thing that was running out, playing out at a bus station in Punjab, somewhere, Batinda or wherever it was, it was a Canberra Bank ad. So let us just play that out to give our listeners a bit of a flavor of the kind of direct reach and impact that you provide to marketers, that Hrithi provides to marketers. So let us just play this out. Thank you so much, Canberra Bank. Very nice indeed, really. And I watched the video also, wish I could play the video here or maybe I will just embed that video in the post because this is an audio episode, but we will embed the video and I can see that this is the kind of creative that you can even listen to as elevator music without or elevator sound without the video and it makes complete sense. So the narrative is complete. So if somebody is looking for their bus and still listening to it passively, the message still goes on. And can I add one point here? It is a very interesting point because this is one medium where there is no remote control in our hands. You cannot switch channels. 100% guaranteed your message reaches the mass. Because non-skippable, when you are at a passenger terminals, okay, you have people coming and going and the core focus is on the bus arrival departure and nobody will skip the arrival departure announcements. Most importantly, if you have an ad running, you still cannot escape him because his eyes and ears are completely on the entire communication which is happening at the bus depot. And I think Riti Solutions also provides two brands. I mean, you named a huge brand just before we started talking and you can name some brands subsequently in a bit now. But you also provide brands the creative solutions because you know what is the kind of creative that will work fastest and most effectively in these markets. So do you also provide these solutions? We have an in-house creative team who makes the jingles and we also have partners across the country to create jingles in local dialect. Okay, in every state we have partners, I mean all these 8 states so that we get those creative local touch in the entire communication. I mean, Rajasthan folk music will be embedded, Rajasthan folk, Rajasthan local language will be enacted when you are in Rajasthan, Punjab you have local touch. So getting that feeling and getting that insight is very important and getting the attention of the customers will be very easy and we have a lot of interesting attention grabbers also as part of the communication and those are localized attention grabbers because I mean end of the day here attention is required and that is what we bring in to our interesting communication and then that ad will follow. So one and a half crore half-hourly refreshed kind of passengers total in a day, right? And that is what 1.5 into 30, 45 crores in a month? Yeah. So that is the size of a country across your 575 bus stations and these are people who will take the messages with them. These messages could trigger discovery attempts by the passenger or even a buy attempt, you never know. So tell me what is the kind of brands that have been partners with you over the years? So I would like to start with my first customer, most loyal customer, still a customer. The first customer is Kirti Gold, it is a regional brand based in Lathur, which they started off very small, but today they are present in 8 states across the country, okay? And they have grown with us also, wherever we are present they are present, today they are kind of annualized deal with them, okay? And they not a single day where they have been absent from our medium and even during the lockdown, 6 months our media was closed, you know, they were waiting for that media to restart and we again got them back. So I mean, that is the kind of loyal customer, so it is almost 17 years. My God! 17 years non-stop. Every day except for COVID. Yeah. Oh, amazing. And they used to be very interesting also, I would like to add this, gold is something which is an attention for everybody, you know, moment. So gold, Kirti Gold, you know, that is how they start and getting the attention of the people and they learned it much better than us, how to use this medium and the old ad, one of the ads which was getting played, they still continue, they change the ads, but that ad, they still treat it as the best ad and they keep running that in between also. So that, that is when the attention becomes easier. Which are the other brands, the bigger known brands, I mean, I am not saying that Kirti is a small brand, but the ones that most people would know. So some of the prominent brands across sectors, I would like to name some of them. So in the FMCG space, we have Dabur, we have Imami, we have GSK, okay, and we have Barley, okay, who have done campaigns intermittently and during seasons they come and they do their campaigns regularly. And where these companies are headed, the marketing is headed by really fabulous CMOs, I mean, two names that come to mind are Rajeev Dubey of Dabur and Krishna Buddha Rao and his associate Mayank at Parle Biscuits, for instance, truly, and these are the kind of people who are tenacious and they will fiercely, as every CMO must and should, guard their advertising budgets and marketing spends. And the kind of products that they produce are definitely of top quality and of great and immense relevance across the length and breadth of the country, regardless of language or, you know, geographical divides or, or whatever. So when such top marketers are endorsing you, by using your services, I think that in itself should be a very, very interesting beacon for every young marketer and every established marketer whom I think, no, I am far above all of this. The point is, if you want to grow, you need to grow your market size, your customer size. And I think it's these high growth markets, which are the tier three and four markets that are huge. Wonderful. Wonderful. And you were also mentioning, I mean, does a brand like a mega global MNC brand, which is now very Indian at heart, like a Hindustan Unilever, does it use you? Has it used you? Yes, we have used, we have done interesting campaigns for Live Boy, for Lux, Annapurna. We have also done for few other brands, but these are the brands who are using very regularly and they come during season and they advertise. And Lux has used it very interestingly also, you know, in Maharashtra to create Lux sandal promotion. And wonderful. Live Boy, we did a campaign against, interesting campaign in bus station, which was integration with SMS. Listen to the ad. Okay. Okay. And you respond. Okay. Send an SMS. Yeah. Yeah. So, there was an interesting campaign, which we did in case of Live Boy. The campaign was, you know, there was an ad, which was directed and out of that ad, people had to understand, kitte prakaar ke kitanu Live Boy marta hai. Oh pape. Acha? And people had to respond saying with the answer, okay, das prakaar ke kitanu marta hai. So, that was the narrative and people had to listen to the ad and respond. And did they get some gratification? Yeah. Instant gratification. Hamper was dispatched to them, to the residents. So, the interesting way is, lot of interesting campaigns with parlay we did, we did across 30 stations of Maharashtra during Ganpati Utsav, okay. And the campaign goes like this, you know, cha maari, which was a maari promotion. Okay. Okay. So, the campaign had an integration, on-ground integration. We have put up, tied up with the canteens and we put up stalls where we made people buy maari biscuit and get chai free. Okay. And this whole model was cha maari and, you know, I mean, as a thought process, we wanted people to know that maari is something which is best available with parlay. And maari is a brand because people, people know maari, I mean, there is no brand recognition for maari. It's a category. Yeah, it's a category. But parlay glucose is there, you know, so we wanted to bring in parlay with maari and that was, and more so in rural and tie-three and tie-four. This whole gathered fully. Let me just remind our listeners, just in case you have just sort of got into the middle of this podcast somewhere here at this point, I am speaking with Rajesh Radhakrishnan, CEO and founder of Vritti Group and he is talking about his amazing and, well, he monopolizes on it because he is the only, I mean, Vritti is the only one that offers this amazing service called Audio Wala Bus Stand. How simply named is it, but how impactful too, really. And this is the mass media wing of Vritti Solutions, which are pioneers in rural marketing with its unique mass media property, Audio Wala Bus Stand, which is today India's largest digital audio network, reaching 1.5 crore people daily, every day at 575 bus stations across 8 states. Really wonderful. And what is, and this is phenomenally cost effective, right? How much is it? I won't say rupees, I know what it is. So how many paise per person is it? It's less than a paise per person. You mean not a paise, you mean a paisa per person? Yeah, absolutely. It's less than a paisa per person for 1.5 crore listeners daily. Amazing. You can create a 1.5 lakh campaign across 575 bus stations per day. And the media has been structured where you could select the stations according to your requirement. Okay. If you are looking for mass kind of promotion, like entertainment sector, they are just seven day movie promotions to happen, you can do that. So just seven days. Seven days across all markets. Let's say, suppose it's a Hindi network, okay. So you might not want to put it in Karnataka, for whatever reason, let's be very, very bookish about it. Okay. And not imaginative, because I mean, what is to say that Karnataka doesn't have some amazing Hindi audiences also, but I'm just saying, let's just go by the bookish marketer's style of function. Okay. A very few of that breed left, they're all very, very smart. But let's say the Hindi speaking markets. So let's say there are about seven states over there, out of the eight, correct. Okay, Rajesh, hypothetical situation, okay. There is a television network or there is a streaming platform which is coming out with a movie. That movie is going to make its world OTT premiere, let's say, it's a good Hindi movie, right. And Hindi speaking markets out of the eight states, seven are Hindi speaking, right, in your entire network. Let me just remind my listeners that eight states, Vritti Solutions reaches 1.5 crore daily listeners in 575 stations. So instead of those eight, in which Karnataka is also there, let's say that you want to go to seven Hindi speaking market states predominantly. So for those seven states, at one paisa per person, okay, the cost, right, what is it going to be for seven days of a campaign, which will drive people to remember that on seven days from now, or six days from now, or five days from now in the seven day course, this movie is coming out and you want people to subscribe or Netflix is bringing out an amazing film, right and it wants to tell people this one is coming out seven days from now, just watch it for 199 and you will watch a huge amount of other great content. So what would it cost on Netflix, seven days, Hindi speaking markets, bus stands, campaigns? Approximately 10.5 lakhs. That's all. Yeah. And it would reach approximately total, what, 10 crores, 10 crore people traveling by bus. Yeah. And they are the exact precise audience that Netflix would want to target for its 199 a month plan. Amazing, amazing. Really, there is so much that can be done, really wonderful. Now tell me, I'm a marketer, I've spent, I mean, Rajiv Dubey and Krishnamurtharao and the others of, you know, their ilk have spent money, they will want you to tell them, okay, now, where is the report? Show me the impact. How do you share measurements and give me the idiot's guide here so that not only this idiot sitting across you, because I'm not aware of how this works, but also those who might not be aware of, I mean, they must be, I think, startled by the reach and the cost at which you are giving them that reach, vritti is. But they will also want to know, how do I measure this and go back and get 10 pats on my back? We have started this new GeoReach concept, which will help measure the mass medium for your lapel strap. This will help you assess the impact of the medium. This whole concept GeoReach is targeting the entire bus station around 500 meters and get people to watch the same communication, what is happening on audio on their mobile. And you are able to actually engage and give experience to the brand, you know, and make them like, comment. And if you want to pass on some Paytm vouchers, or, you know, some gratification can begin instantly and make the people realize that there is a movie coming. As you mentioned, if you're on Netflix, you've done some similar campaigns for circus. Oh, you did? Yeah, yeah. Zee and Pictures. They came out with a movie, Premier Circus, which was relayed across Maharashtra bus stations. Wow. And we selected about 100 odd bus stations of Maharashtra, where LED screens were also there. And the movie audio was running, the movie promo was running on the mobile. And there was an ad which was shown on Facebook Insta, that watch the premier on so and so date was exactly seven days before the movie release, again, got people to like, comment. And people were told about the date and time and even went on to send WhatsApp message and SMS message to people, you know, reminding that so and so movie is happening. So all those people who have come, then we target them digitally and make it a 360 degree integrated communication strategy. Excellent. Excellent. I also hear that the single best, most respected custodian and guide of the entire banking system in India, the Reserve Bank of India is also your client. Tell me about that. Yeah. So this campaign is part of a larger strategy of reaching the rural and digital awareness and digital literacy awareness is going to be driven more in small town and rural and more so tier three, tier four and rural. So selected about almost 170 to 180 stations across these eight states, where they want to focus. This had almost all the important tier three, tier four cities across and they communicated awareness about what do's and don'ts in particularly with respect to making the payment, UPI payment was also part of that, staying safe. And whatever communication is happening on TV, that was bit customized, okay, on our way. And they communicated to the rural audience at large. And it was a very successful campaign. And we did about seven campaigns on the total last year. Wow. Different. Wonderful. You know, I have another thought, there are about 12 to 14 main cities or locations in India, let me put it that way, that are the that by where people actually invest about in and acquire and buy about 70 to 80% of all new IPOs that are issued. Imagine if a company which is getting listed and is, you know, coming out with an IPO, if you were to actually inform people about the upcoming IPO, and say, get ready, keep your so and so account, Demat account, talk to your guide and be informed, this might be a good opportunity for you to invest. And you know, as for all the RBI and SEBI guidelines, that communication, if it goes out, I'm sure it would really, really help companies. So have IPOs also been promoted on your? You have given me an interesting area where we can actually focus. I think this is something we'll really take off in small town and rural and that's what we anticipate. I think it's an interesting point which you're making. We will take this as a cue to which new IPO companies. Wonderful. I'll send you a bill for all IROLTs across each and every. And this is in the public domain, so you cannot back out. No, just that. We are always there to help support you. So we are looking at partnership, surely. All right. So we'll take this conversation offline. So what are the problems that, you know, marketers today generally face, according to you, you know, and what exasperates you, especially when I don't think enough marketers in the numbers and brands who should be coming to you for solutions, for market, customer awareness and market expansion and growth actually don't come because of their ignorance. And I hope Mediabricks can help correct that to some extent. But what is it that exasperates you about it and more important, forget your exasperation, I'm sure you will grow. What are the primary challenges faced by brands and brand marketers when it comes to advertising, marketing and increasing brand awareness in small towns and rural markets? I'd like to put this in two parts. One, when we look at the traditional medium, you know, brands, the large brands, even if you look at MNC brands, they go with minimum risk and they want to look at TV as an easy way out because they know that the best channel if I put or a good sports channel if I invest, you know, I can reach out en masse, you know, I can reach out to a huge audience and the numbers are driven at a national level and awareness becomes easier. But the moment you want to reach out to tier 3 and tier 4, there may be a question mark but overall numbers targets get met, you know, and they know that they are getting a cost effective solution when you look at the national numbers. But the moment you want to take a regional approach where you are looking at results in every pocket, every district, every threshold, what are the numbers and how your business is growing, then the challenge starts. And the moment you say there is a local competitor who is troubling you, okay, he is not allowing you to take off, okay, and he can become a spoke for you, then the strategy changes and that's where people start remembering new medium, new opportunities to reach out to that TV. And we have come exactly with and grown exactly the way this situation comes up, you know, and tier 3 and tier 4 cities in particularly where people are looking at avenues, by default people are looking at us and brands which are in, if you look at the overall ranking, third and fourth or fifth position overall in the entire category, they are the people who look for interesting avenues. And they look at ways to compete with the first guy, you know, and they want to look at interesting way, most importantly cost effective way to reach out to rural audience. And that's where we take this and help them and in a completely 60 degree manner. I mean, I have come out with interesting campaigns like WECO, last 10 years, Vajrasanthi, Vajrasanthi, you know, they are a niche player, I mean, Ayurveda, you know, rural is, it is getting less and less niche and more and more mass take it from people, I use it, yeah. So that is where rural audience is there and they know that this is the best medium. So, they come for, during the season, almost 6 months in a year, they advertise with us, important periods and they make sure that they get the best out of the advertisement. Wonderful, wonderful. So, Vritti Solutions, Vritti Media actually has a potential of reaching 15 million people nationally, 25 to 40,000 at each bus station of the 575 stations that is, that are in its grid across 8 states, right, every day. And that is amazing, really, very, very nice. But now, what I get from this, the sense I get is that this is amazing for FMCG mass national brands. But years ago, Bunty or Bubbly came and Thaugula Laddu became very, very popular through the film. So, today, if somebody gets off at Kanpur bus stop, the interstate one has come in from Kota or Lucknow or wherever else and he gets to or she gets to hear, I am just saying. So, do you have this kind of local special kind of campaigns done, do you offer that? And if you look at the last year, for instance, or over the years, what is the mix, you know, average back of the envelope, kind of, not guesstimate, of course, because you would have all the numbers, but what is the mix approximate between national brands using your services of Vrithi and the local city or village, not village, but, you know, statewide kind of campaigns? So, if you look at our breakup, the regional or so-called retail brands, it is about 23 percent. Retail? Yeah, retail business. Okay. So, it is almost around 35 percent and balance comes from government. Oh, tell me about government and later, then after that, we will talk about what is happening during these election times, but tell me about the government first. So, government, all departments, by default, all the rural communications, whether it is the health department, water supply department, whether it is women and child, okay, and they use this medium to educate the rural audience, tell about the schemes, tell about the offers, tell about, I mean, Awaaz Yojana, tell about, because there are so many schemes which come and people do not know about this. Agricultural Insurance Corporation uses very extensively to educate about insurance, crop insurance, Kisan Bhima Yojana, which is a very popular Yojana. Wonderful. SDOCR, Govo, again, these are all part of, under the aegis of Kisan Bhima Yojana, so many private operators are operating. By default, when they want to reach rural, they come to us and because we have DAP rates also, we have an amount which can be measured and controlled and we will know what to spend and each of these departments take this as an opportunity to come and join hands. Wonderful. In fact, one corporate brand I can think of, I mean, you spoke about the government kind of bodies and the amazing PSA and public enabling kind of work through these campaigns that they do is really very, very nice. Just imagine a Mahindra tractors, for instance, you know, they are such a conscientious entity which will want to go out into the depths of the agricultural spaces and try and empower even the slightly smaller farmer with not the very, very big holding and they would definitely want to use something like this, you know, to keep people informed, their target groups informed. Really, I think what you are doing is amazing. It's unfortunately a little unsung so far, predominantly because marketers might want to tread the safe and narrow, so to speak. But then that safe can also become waste, kind of waste riddled narrow street. So anyways, I mean, I'm just excited about this. Mahindra tractors has done campaign, Sonalica has done campaign. Oh, they have? Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. So, Sonalica has used this very interesting way also. Oh, tell me. We have set a stand at the bus station. Okay. We have done an integrated campaign where we get space also inside the bus station because of our relationship. Otherwise, ST personally do not allow space. But we have created a model of a 360 approach where you communicate, you can put an engagement model at the bus station and give experience. Ah, like when come out into, you get into Ahmedabad airport and you can see a lovely range road displayed over there. So, tell me, this arrangement with the bus stations, is it something on hail fellow well met, humari yaari dosti hai or is it something that can withstand scrutiny by the local government? It can withstand scrutiny because it's on paper, everything, we take official permission. But it's the permission which takes time, takes seven days to get the permission. But we can get, we can got Honda vehicle standing in each of the Karnataka bus stations, about 35 bus stations, you know, Honda two-wheeler standing, communication happening, teaser happening, people coming and trying the bike outside and there were schemes and offers given instantly, okay. And people coming with cash and paying cash because there was a discount offer and this was happening during Diwali and people have a lot of money in hands. So, such campaigns we have done which gives good results. So, an Amazon for instance, you know, I mean, I don't buy or nobody buys Hondas from Amazon in India or maybe, I don't know, they must be selling cars also. But what I'm trying to say is that on Amazon, a lot of impulse buy happens, right? That impulse buying you've actually brought down to the ground in the backyards of or in the courtyards of bus stands across the country, where people come and say, man, this is a good bike I had, I just want a 10,000 or a 5,000 rupee down payment and you've got your discount and you go home. Amazing! You really are empowering the entire retail space also in India and brands big and small can come. Which are the most important or most popular categories that have remained with you? I would imagine education, I would imagine visas across the country, I mean, you have Punjab as one of your states. So, which are the main categories and main sectors or sub-sectors? When you look at retail and local brands, it's healthcare, education and third, local agriculture and fourth, jewelers and fifth, we have very good category in the form of local auto dealers. Okay. I mean, they also use this campaign for late generation. Excellent, excellent, excellent. And on the corporate front, we have FMCG, we have banking, we have a very strong BFSI and then we have very strong agriculture. Every agriculture company, the moment they want to launch a product, use our medium to educate the farmers about the product because agriculture, there is a big shortage of mediums which are available. They have to go do farmer meets, okay, they have to do some wall painting and they don't have any other media available, I mean, they can't afford TV. So, the best medium which they can afford today to reach out to farmers is this medium and almost all the agri-companies have worked with this. AudioBus, from Vritti, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. You also mentioned something about when you were speaking before we started recording about, you know, your, the masala brands case study, tell me that little story. So, this is Meshra Masale, this is a new startup in Pune. Okay. And masala per se, there are a lot of, it's a local game and a lot of local competitors, okay, and this competition is coming from all corners and getting the Maharashtrian audience, okay, to look at you is not easy, okay, and because they are going to, and masala per se, change does not happen so easily, you know. People, if they are using certain masala, they would continue to use that and that goes with the kind of ancestral touch, okay, your father, mother using, okay, and you will continue using that. Now, that is where we created this whole approach of GeoReach, where Amazon was connected, they advertised the Amazon, on Amazon, and that link was connected on the Facebook and Insta and audio campaigns were running and telling them that there is a special offer going on, Amazon for masalas, you should come and try, okay, and that campaign ran for about a month and people were coming to check what is that offer and hearing the ad, looking at opening the Facebook and Insta and, you know, clicking and people have bought it also, almost 10-15 kilos of, you know, masala, ranging from different products, actually, they bought this through this Amazon connection because they have now taken initiative of putting their own website also, okay, where they can order on their website instead of doing on Amazon, because, you know, there is a model, GeoReach is also helping target and measuring the impact. GeoReach, by the way, is G-E-O. Yeah, G-E-O. R-E-A-C-H, not G-I-O. Geographical reach. Yeah, GeoReach. But in fact, since I mentioned G-E-O just now, G-I-O, they are on the verge of announcing new plans, we are recording on the day that I think they still haven't announced some new plans, must be, you know, subscription-based plans and I think that they could use your medium as an amazing conduit of information for people, you know, because G-E-O works beautifully on even, you know, the lower-end smartphones or higher-end feature phones, if there is some such thing, it's coining that. But yeah, I mean, you can empower with the solutions and media can empower virtually any brand across any sector of operations. We also do CSR. Now you will say, look, the kind of things we are doing, empowering businesses in India across really is like, okay, you're in the pursuit of profit, but indirectly or inherent in your ways of acquiring and earning profit is your ability to do and fulfill purpose also, so that's intrinsic. But otherwise, conscientiously, consciously, do you like to do some CSR and if so, what are the kind of things you have done so far? So, as a company, definitely, we have a lot of focus on CSR and in particularly three areas where we focus for CSR, one is digital literacy and we have taken up, we work very closely with Art of Living. My colleague, Virender Jamlade is very active and plays a very vital role there and we work very closely in spreading digital awareness and going to rural Indias and teaching kids and also, you know, working with jails and getting people out of their problem areas. So, digital literacy, then improving people in their livelihood and getting them up and third, most important area where we are currently using digital CSR is, we also are driving the entire concept of education, okay, in urban areas also. You know, these are little areas and we are looking at people who are below the poverty line in places like Dharavi, okay, we've done some campaigns, going and teaching them. We went to Palghar recently, you know, adopted some school and provide them waters, okay, in terms of water purifier and then providing them classes. I mean, just completely backward village. There was just, before Diwali, we did that exercise and this kind of initiatives looking at tier 3, tier 4 and going absolute rural in terms of education. Wonderful, wonderful. This is Pawan Ashrawala, your GNTV media cast from mediabeef.com. I am with Rajesh Radhakrishnan of Vriti Group. Rajesh, why Vriti Group? To empower marketers in India. Why not, Pawanji? We have a reach of 1.5 crore people per day, presence in eight states at 575 bus stations and all this at less than one paisa per person. Most importantly, 45 crore people in a month and every 30 minutes there is a population which changes. And most importantly, here we give you complete market penetration, which your other competitors like TV and print does not give. And last but not the least, we have a complete system which can measure and manage and give you complete impact. So, you are talking about the Audiowala bus stand from Vriti Media, iMedia. Wonderful. Most time to you, Rajesh. Wow, Rajesh, I really enjoyed this conversation. A lot of insights for me, especially about rural marketing, about the high growth sectors of India, markets of India. Really, really amazing, amazing. And I think and I hope and I am sure that marketers will be inspired to sit up and to emulate the kind of great work that some of the other accomplished, evolved marketers like the Rajiv Dubez and the Krishna Gupta Rao, I am using plurals, but they stand apart and people like them and other brands who are actually using Vriti iMedia and Audio Buswala, RBI has been using it, Hindustan Unilever has been using it. A lot of government spaces and departments have been using this for health, for public welfare. Truly wonderful. But before I close this conversation, I want to ask you, elections are on. Are you approaching political parties to, we work very closely with the Election Commission of India and we help them make people from rural India aware of the importance of voting and do's and don'ts are properly covered through the medium and this media is a high impact medium for them and it actually just the grassroots where maximum communication is required. Wonderful. So, one day in a bus station where Vriti iMedia ads are played out, displayed and heard together, what is the time like? Morning to? We have 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. in the night, total 18 hours. And how do you keep updating the ads that have to come out? So, it works. Let me tell you about the technology that will help you understand how it works. We have a central server in Pune that is called the control room and we have the local system in every bus stand there is a local system. This works on a disconnected architecture. In rural India, internet is inconsistent. So, you need to have a system which works. So, we have put a device which connects with central server and downloads and plays locally and the ads are uploaded in the central server and this device connects, downloads and then plays locally. So, I give a schedule to the customer as soon as it is uploaded, okay, what is the schedule and then once the ad was played, it sends the report back to the central server that that has got played and when it has got played and such kind of reporting also is given to the customer. And who monitors to ensure that the systems are on and if there is a power outage, what happens? Yeah. This is also a very interesting question. It is completely with backup because it is a very critical, mission critical application which you are running for state transport. They are managing the passenger information on a very top rate basis. You know, it is very critical for them to have a very high uptime and with all backup, you know, UPS put there. And the ready hours are very critical for them, you know, where announcement happens and there are multiple speakers all around, okay, and with this announcement gets communicated to audience about the entire arrival departure announcement system. So, given this criticality, we have put up a high availability setup and then we talk about this system for internet. And you know, there are devices kept where it, moment there is an internet outage also I get to know. When there is a PC going down, when there is a speaker going down, when there is a LED going down, all these are managed by central control. What decibel level I have to maintain at every location, that also gets managed by central control. You know, I can, moment it is 9 p.m. in the night, I bring down the outer speaker, I shut down all the awns, I just keep the announcement within the waiting area. So, all this management is done by us. Is it automated? Everything is automated. Starts automatically, stops automatically, okay. Every day morning, I mean, I do not need to know anything and then on top of it, we have a tire. If there is an emergency at every location, we have local partners who come and support it and I get to know, I inform them. All controls are from central location and we have a complete control room. I invite you to come to the control room also and see, it is a beautiful control room which you are controlling and managing. Where is it located? Pune, Pune. Pune, your head office. Yeah, head office. Lovely, lovely. This is really wonderful. So, Rajesh, I have enjoyed my conversation, lot of insights and you bring amazing depth, width and, you know, breadth of your experience. So, what did you think of your chat with me today? You opened a lot of things for us. Actually, I would say, you know, bringing to light what is hidden is very important. I think you unearthed the potential and thanks for bringing to light so many interesting points. This conversation was truly interactive and you made me comfortable also, most importantly, because doing a podcast and, you know, and getting the audience to understand about new products is not easy. And I think you brought to the four, the important points what our company stands for and I think you touched upon many interesting aspects of our business and really great job. Thanks. Thank you very much indeed. We try to bring out the best of the offerings in the marketplace to help empower all our, you know, audiences, viewers, listeners, users of mediabrief.com. So, happy to have done that. And thank you very much for your time. Rajesh and thanks also once again to Prabodh Menon of Alchemist PR for having made this interaction possible. Thanks so much. You are smiling and making us join together. That's really wonderful. And about mediabrief.com, Bawalji, first let me congratulate you for all the good work which you have been doing. I have been getting a lot of interesting campaigns which you have done, interesting podcasts which you have done. And I must once again thank you for this wonderful podcast which you created, interesting video stories which you have done. And this comes to me very regularly. And I use this regularly to share it with my friends and also with my business colleagues, interesting campaigns which are there. And I personally make sure that I go through it and learn from that. And this is really something which prompted me to look at this interview today with you. Okay. And I'm very happy with this whole method which you have adopted. And it keeps the other person constantly on the lookout for excellence. Keep the good work going. And I'm very happy to keep getting your updates. Thank you so much. You're most welcome. And you're ever so kind, Rajesh. Thank you very much indeed. And I wish you all the very best for Vritti Eye Media. We are here to support you, partner with you in anything that you want us to do to help you take the and spread the good word about all the great services that you provide to marketers. So, thank you once again. That was Rajesh Radhakrishnan, CMO and founder of Vritti Group. My distinguished guest on this episode of Mediacast, the podcast series from mediabreak.com. I hope you enjoyed and found the conversation extremely insightful as insightful as I certainly did. We'll meet again in the next episode of Mediacast. This is your host and friend, Pawan R. Chawla saying, take care, stay safe, stay well-informed and be smart in your media buys. Bye-bye.
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