inDrive India, the purpose driven company which intends to expand its product proposition from being a ride-hailing app to that of a super app for all things Delivery, Outstation, Cargo and Services has roped in its first brand ambassador- Vikrant Massey.
This comes a year after the people-and-purpose driven company had undergone a rebranding exercise and changed its name from inDriver to inDrive.
Speaking to Marketing Mind on the sidelines of inDrive India’s brand ambassador announcement event, Avik Karmakar, Senior GTM Manager- South Asia, inDrive, emphasised that the reason behind onboarding Massey as inDrive’s first brand ambassador lies in the fact that both- the actor who recently appeared in ‘12th Fail’ and inDrive, have been growing slow and steadily over time and the two’s ‘value systems’ are seemingly identical.
“Even though inDrive had been doing digital, performance and OOH ads for quite some time, when I joined the company, I realised that despite ample brand awareness, people were not downloading our app and using our competitors’ apps instead because our communication, somehow, wasn’t reaching them in the same way that we wanted it to. We wanted people to know that we’re here to make a difference, but that message wasn’t reaching them which is why a majority of the audience was under the impression that inDrive was similar to other ride-hailing apps,” he said.
He also mentioned that it was due to this very reason that despite being different from other players in the category, inDrive’s proposition of offering ‘fairer fares’ and ‘full control’ in terms of rides, wasn’t coming across clearly to the brand’s target audience.
“We realised that we needed someone to speak on behalf of us and that’s when we decided to onboard Vikrant, whose journey has been similar to that of ours, as our brand face in India. And being a purpose driven company that we are, he also wants to give back to society. In fact, the timing for the same has been so right that just after we signed the deal with him, he won the Filmfare award this year,” he said.
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With this, Karmakar also highlighted that the other underlying reason behind roping in inDrive India’s first brand ambassador this year was also influenced by the company’s CEO, Arsen Tomsky’s vision to change the lives of one billion plus people by the end of 2030, which is a comparatively short timeline of only six years from now to complete the magnanimous task.
Founded in 2012, inDrive (formerly inDriver) currently is operational in 46 countries and 749 cities excluding Russia and has over 200 million app downloads. As of today, the company’s presence in India, which is one of the top four priority markets for the company, can be seen across 15 cities including Ludhiana, Lucknow, Jaipur, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Pune amongst others.
Currently, inDrive India is also setting up its operations in Hyderabad and Kochi as part of its plan to expand its presence from 15 to 20 Indian cities, i.e- entering five new cities, by the end of this year.
From an advertising perspective, he also mentioned that the company has set aside more than double of its ad budgets this year in comparison to last year.
“Roping in our brand ambassador is just the start of our marketing initiatives in India and we have planned a lot of CSR activities and initiatives, this year. We started as a people-driven company and now that we’re expanding, we are also moving into being a more positive environment and launching pilot projects like our EV Fleet and uplifting our driver partners with initiatives like Driver’s Safety, Driver’s Meet and Greet, Driver of the Month and Driving Naari,” he added.
Having onboarded Massey as the brand ambassador, inDrive has also launched eight weeks long 360-degrees digital ad campaign in India which is conceptualised entirely by the brand’s in-house team- Creative Labs.
In addition, the brand has partnered with two external agencies, one for helping them onboard Massey and one to help them shoot the campaign film, apart from Havas Media Network India which takes care of the brand’s promotional media especially OOH and digital side, and Sociowash for Social Media side of things.
Delving further into how the team went about the creative conceptualisation of the campaign titled ‘Ab App Ki Nahi, Aap ki Chalegi!’, Karmakar stated that since the brand wanted to highlight its key concept- Value for Money and inDrive’s USP “Offer Your fare”, the idea was to ensure that people read the tagline twice so that the recall is higher.
And just like it was intended to be, a vast majority of the people who attended the event did end up mixing up ‘App’ with ‘Aap’ and vice versa when reading the tagline.
“When people get stuck while reading the tagline, they try to focus and read it up correctly which is better than reading once and forgetting the same. And when one reads twice, there’s a high chance that the campaign gets a better top of mind recall,” he said.
Throwing light on to the media mix of the campaign, he pointed out that since 70% of inDrive’s target audience i.e- 18-40 year olds, comprises mobile users and people who are moving away from watching daily soaps on TVs to OTTs now as the same are available on handheld devices, this campaign is only going to be on Digital.
“We have seen that 70% of our target audience are mobile users and they are consuming digital platforms including the IPL through mobile, hence we have decided to run ads exclusively for mobile users on JioCinema. We have just started investing in cricket because we feel that the synergies of two of our main target audience for this year- office goers and families, lie here. Apart from this, we have also rolled out some out-of-home activations for this campaign- a banner in Pacific Mall in Delhi’s Netaji Subhash Nagar,” he said.
Furthermore, he also mentioned that the key cities where the brand’s main focus lies for this 360-degrees campaign comprising OOH and Digital ads include Delhi, Kolkata and Chandigarh. For all the other key cities, the brand is only going to leverage digital media for its promotions.
As part of this campaign, he mentioned that inDrive has resorted to DV360 for digital ad placements, advertising on the IPL for the first time and included other offline and online channels including social media in its media mix.
Karmakar also pointed out that in addition to the 30-seconder main brand film which showcases a series of situations where inDrive comes to the rescue of people, the brand has also shot four more sequences backing the same in individual segments in 15 seconder and 6 seconder digital films.
With this, he also stated that unlike last year, wherein the brand’s objective was to get more users and app installations, this year the main focus lies on getting increased number of new users and rolling out more purpose driven campaigns so that the two can together lead to a change perception about the company and its vision of changing lives of over one billion people by 2030.
“We are not just putting money to get downloads, but ensuring that once a user downloads our app, they don’t just use us for booking rides but actually get a lot more as we want to give back to society. Hence, we are tying up with NGOs to help children, educate them and launch a slew of initiatives for our driver partners,” he said.
Most recently, inDrive also announced its third hiring in the country with Pratip Mazumder assuming the role of Country Manager for India.
With regards to this, Karmakar mentioned that the fact that the company has appointed a country manager recently for India is a testament to the nation being one of the four top priority markets for inDrive apart from Mexico, Brazil, Kazakhstan.
“As a company, we see a huge investment potential in India as it accounts for a large part of our revenue, not just for the company, but for a lot of non-profit organizations, marathons and football matches that we host for the underprivileged people across countries,” he said.
