MAM
HDFC MF boards the Jagriti Yatra for Bharat’s future
MUMBAI: The 18th edition of Jagriti Yatra, India’s iconic journey of enterprise and inspiration, set off from Mumbai on 7 November, powered this year by HDFC Mutual Fund through its investor education and awareness initiative.
The 15-day, 8,000-kilometre expedition brings together 500 spirited “Yatris” from across India and beyond, chosen from over 68,000 applicants. Their shared destination, an Atmanirbhar Bharat built through ideas, innovation and enterprise.
Speaking at the flag-off in Mumbai’s Bal Gandharva Rang Mandir, HDFC Asset Management Company MD and CEO Navneet Munot, connected India’s entrepreneurial pulse with the nation’s long-term vision of Viksit Bharat 2047. He said empowerment begins with awareness of one’s potential and financial choices. Through its education initiatives, HDFC Mutual Fund aims to help young Indians make informed investment decisions and take confident steps toward financial independence.
Jagriti Yatra founder and MP Shashank Mani reminded participants that the movement’s spirit lies in responsibility and resilience, while CEO Ashutosh Kumar called it a “living classroom” for self-reliance born from local innovation.
The evening featured a stirring keynote by Mann Deshi foundation founder Chetna Gala Sinha, who urged the Yatris to channel resilience into enterprise. Performances by ANKH Ensemble and Folk Masti added rhythm to reflection, celebrating India’s creative energy and unity in diversity.
Over the years, Jagriti Yatra has become one of the world’s largest entrepreneurial journeys on wheels, touching more than 8,000 participants. This year’s train, aptly dubbed the Jagriti Express, will travel across Ahmedabad, Kochi, Hubli and beyond, with mentors such as Ashwin Naik, Sameer K. Mody, and Vishal Dhale guiding the travellers.
As the train leaves Mumbai, it carries more than people, it carries purpose. Each Yatri, and each partner like HDFC Mutual Fund, is helping steer India toward a future powered by awareness, enterprise and self-belief.
MAM
The Merit of Madness: How AI is Changing the Game in Advertising
By Ritz Malik, founder, Ritz Media World.
MUMBAI: When it comes to growth in a competitive landscape, a businessman always has to be a firm believer in Darwinism. You either need to bring a better product, or a better price, or both to the table to get customers and scale. Without this value proposition, you remain unnoticed, and staying unnoticed is not something that a brand wants to do.
You have to do all this and also make sure that you stay cashflow positive at the same time. Otherwise, you’re at a real risk of becoming a large hollow balloon that your competitors are just waiting for to explode or implode under its own weight.
As we’ve entered the era of AI, the notion of a product’s efficacy, cost efficiency, marketability, workflow management, and logistics reliability has become increasingly relevant and prevalently impactful. None of this is background noise anymore. It is the difference between bleeding money on traditional media and actually engineering a profitable campaign.
For example, META’s AI Algorithm has finally given us the ability to measure the ‘CREATIVE’ for a business’s promotions. The best part is that we can do so organically. Content that is actually relevant to the target audience gets more views through reach. This tells us exactly how the audience is reacting before we even scale the budget. This is how we have been gifted the ability to provide merit to the madness of the creative process.
So, our process is as follows:
A set of creatives is built for social media
Their performance is closely monitored for reach and engagement.
Based on the best organic performance, we choose the creative.
Make micro adjustments to add a sales proposition and CTA (but keep it subtle)
Publish the modified creative as an ad.
There’s a lot that goes on in between, but this is the basic method for getting it right. And this is just the AI that’s being used by platforms across the world.
AI utilisation is something that has greatly made the creative process a lot easier. As an agency that thrives on coming up with ideas that are out of this world, we have made the most of leveraging AI to bring ideas to life without spending a fortune.
So, this way, the ability to create high-impact brand stories is no longer under the tyrannical gatekeeping of large budget organisations. It is now that merit solely falls on the storyteller.
Now, AI-powered content production and the AI algorithm on Social Media platforms are asking the question: Is your content compelling?. If yes, the audience will watch your content, share it, and engage with it.
And when it comes to keeping budgets down, we can surely say that it holds the capability to execute million-dollar shoots at a fraction of the cost.
For example, we recently came across a creative challenge by a major Real Estate Developer from Gurugram. They had signed a celebrity couple for their brand ambassadorship a few months ago. They were now about to launch their new project, but for some reason, they could not get their shoot done.
What we came up with was to use the likeness of this celebrity couple and place them throughout the project’s feature video. With the help of AI generation, we were able to rebuild a completely new feature video with their brand ambassadors in 2 days, and no additional physical shots were required.
Imagine being able to save 50-60 lakhs in production costs, 15-20 days in production time, and comfortably be ahead of schedule to launch the project.
This has changed the game entirely. With AI, you can now just acquire the likeness rights of celebrities, and you can just build environments and scenarios with them. The balance between creative and artificial intelligence isn’t a battle for control; it is simply the ultimate tool for survival and scale in a landscape that rewards the fastest and the smartest.
