Digital
Adani Wilmar’s CSR film celebrates SuPoshan Sanginis’ role in fighting malnutrition & anaemia
Mumbai: On International Women’s Day, Adani Wilmar Ltd (AWL), one of India’s largest food FMCG companies has launched a new CSR short film celebrating the invaluable contributions of SuPoshan Sanginis in eradicating malnutrition and anaemia amongst its target groups- children (0-5 years), adolescent and women in reproductive age. These women volunteers are an integral part of Fortune SuPoshan Project, a pioneering initiative of Adani Wilmar and implemented by Adani Foundation, the CSR arm of Adani Group to combat malnutrition and anaemia in India.
SuPoshan Sanginis empowers their communities and are making their voices heard. Their dedication shows how individuals can spark positive change and inspire others to join in, creating a culture of teamwork and inclusivity. At the grassroots, they’re pivotal in breaking the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition. At the same time, these Sanginis also act as beacons of women’s empowerment in their communities.
The newly launched CSR short film, which is airing today, depicts a Sangini visiting a family, diligently checking on their son’s health and ensuring that he receives proper nutrition to thrive. This narrative highlights the transformative role of Sanginis in rural India, showcasing their endeavours to uplift the lives of undernourished children, impart hygiene practices, and educate families on the significance of nutritious foods such as leafy vegetables, millets, legumes, and fruits. Through their unwavering dedication, these women volunteers are not only nurturing the physical growth of future generations but also spearheading positive change within their communities. The four-min CSR short film, which has been directed by the filmmaker Tiyash Sen and conceptualised by DDB Mudra group, will be extended across platforms like Meta & YouTube for maximum visibility.
Commenting on the newly launched CSR short film, Adani Wilmar Ltd MD & CEO Angshu Mallick said, “The Fortune SuPoshan project holds a special place in our hearts, and we take pride in the progress it has made towards eradicating malnutrition and anaemia since its inception. Given that malnutrition is closely linked to food and nutrition, there is no better organisation than us to address it, considering Adani Wilmar’s status as the largest food company in the country. It, therefore, becomes our responsibility to actively work towards this cause. Our SuPoshan Sanginis have played a pivotal role in achieving these objectives, working tirelessly at the grassroots level. The CSR short film serves as a testament to the extraordinary dedication of Sanginis and their unwavering commitment to enhancing the health and well-being of their communities. Their passion and efforts have been instrumental in breaking the worrying issue of intergenerational cycle of malnutrition, and we are proud to honour their contributions on International Women’s Day.”
DDB Mudra creative head Nitin Pradhan said, “Through the metaphor of the chalk drawings on the wall that capture the world through the confines of his house window, the intent was to visually show the journey of a malnourished kid who recovers gradually, with the passage of time. The Suposhan Sangini is instrumental in this recovery in a variety of ways, bringing to our attention her role in helping us get rid of malnourishment as a widespread malaise.”
Initiated in 2016, the Fortune SuPoshan Project has witnessed a resounding success in enhancing the health and nutritional status of its target groups in vulnerable communities. The project’s unique approach involves active engagement with stakeholders, including gram panchayats, local governing bodies, healthcare facilities, and frontline health workers. The training and deployment of SuPoshan Sanginis, who’ve been picked up from the villages that are a part of the project, played a vital role in implementing interventions and driving behavioural changes at the grassroots level.
Lauding the part played by SuPoshan Sanginis in making the project a success, Adani Foundation chairperson Dr Priti Adani added, “I have consistently maintained that the Sanginis have played a significant role in the success of Fortune SuPoshan. The film tribute on International Women’s Day is well-timed and commendable. Their work deserves recognition, particularly their remarkable achievement in breaking the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition.”
Empowered with comprehensive knowledge of nutrition and the use of technology like tablets, the SuPoshan Sanginis have conducted interventions, utilising cooking demonstrations to focussed group discussions and individual discussions, to spread awareness about health and nutrition as well as government policies and benefits. They act as bridges between communities as well as serve as a connecting factor with the aanganwadis.
Since its inception in 2016, the Fortune SuPoshan Project has spread its network across 31 sites in the country including some of the aspirational districts like Vidisha(MP) & Narmada(Gujarat), reaching over 4,04,261 lakh households through 1000+ Sanginis across 1940 villages and slums. The proactive approach of Sanginis have resulted in around 90,000 children being saved from malnutrition. More than 3 lakh adolescent girls and women in reproductive age have also benefitted from the project’s intervention through the women volunteers.
The endline evaluation by a New Delhi-based research institute, recently disclosed the impactful interventions of the Fortune SuPoshan Project in addressing malnutrition among children under five across six sites. Despite India ranking 107 out of 121 countries in the Global Hunger Index 2022, the evaluation showcased the project’s effectiveness in combating malnutrition, which is especially critical given India’s high global child wasting rate.
Apart from child nutrition, the project also addresses maternal health, infant and child feeding practices, adolescent knowledge and Water Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) practices. Positive outcomes include increased Antenatal Care (ANC) check-ups, iron folic acid consumption, institutional births, early breastfeeding initiation, and improved dietary diversity among beneficiaries.
Digital
GUEST COLUMN: How AI is restructuring distributor and retailer motivation models
From incentives to intelligence, AI is redefining how brands engage channel partners
MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming how brands engage with their most critical yet often overlooked stakeholders: distributors, retailers, and last-mile influencers. For Abhinav Jain, co-founder and CEO of Almonds Ai, this shift marks a fundamental departure from traditional, transaction-led incentive models toward behaviour-driven, data-intelligent ecosystems. In this piece, Jain examines how AI is enabling brands to decode partner motivations, predict engagement patterns, and deliver personalised, scalable experiences—ultimately redefining channel relationships from transactional exchanges to long-term growth partnerships.
Across many sectors, there is increasing recognition that motivating those who bring products to market (distributors, retailers, last-mile influencers) poses a growing challenge.
Brands continue to invest significant marketing and digital resources to consumers, yet in many countries and the vast majority of emerging economies, these types of consumer-focused investment areas have had little impact on ultimate product delivery. Rather, it is still the case that traditional retail continues to make up most products sold.
So why is it that the systems built around motivating these channels have yet to evolve?
For decades, distributor and retailer engagement revolved around static schemes – quarterly targets, volume-based rewards, and occasional trade promotions. These programs were designed around transactions, not behaviour. The assumption was simple: if incentives increase, performance will follow.
Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, the definition of performance is being challenged.
With the development of artificial intelligence, businesses can move beyond simply creating loyalty based on transactional-based models and toward models built on behaviours, the behaviours of channel partners that are intrinsic to their motivations in engaging with particular brands. As a result, the means by which businesses develop relationships within their distribution network are starting to evolve; thus, ultimately changing how brands interact with those within their distribution network.
Assessing engagement: Transitioning from transactional- to behavioural intelligence
Traditional loyalty systems refer to transactional activity (sales data). Although this data is valuable and important, it only provides a partial view of engagement across the channel partner.
For example, a retailer may have a high frequency of sales of a product, but their lack of engagement with the manufacturer would not reflect that they have true loyalty toward that brand. Conversely, a retailer who actively participates in training programmes, acts as brand advocates, and is engaged in learning with the supplier would exhibit more profound levels of loyalty but would have been invisible based on historical incentive programmes.
Artificial intelligence allows for the identification of behaviours that help to address this gap. Brands are able to use a variety of engagement data points, participate in learning programs, respond to communications, redeem behaviour and track platform use behaviour in order to identify motivation through behaviour.
McKinsey has stated that companies that leverage advanced analytics for their sales and distribution functions can achieve as much as a 15-20 per cent increase in productivity due to increased awareness of their behavioural trends throughout their networks.
This visibility of behavioural patterns within channel ecosystems can be transformational to brands as they can now view how partners engage on their path to purchasing products, instead of just measuring the sales revenue generated by those purchases.
Predicting motivations, not just measuring performance
Possibly, the largest contribution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to helping brands engage with partners via channel ecosystems is its ability to predict future engagement versus simply measuring past performance.
Traditionally, brands only realised that a partner was disengaged (not likely to purchase products) once their sales performance had already declined. By then, the brand would have to use significant amounts of incentives or aggressive promotional activities to recovery their partner’s engagement level.
AI models can help organisations to detect early signs that a partner is becoming disengaged, such as declining participation in learning modules, declining interaction via the platform, or slower reward redemption rates. These indicators can help organisations to proactively engage with their partners before their sales performance begins to decline.
The practical application of AI and predictive analytics gives brands the ability to re-engage with their partners prior to their sales performance declines. For example, instead of developing and implementing broad-reaching incentive programs that provide a “one size fits all” incentive to all partners in an ecosystem, brands are able to develop targeted, engaging re-engagement programmes. This is how personalisation can be done on a large scale, such as across global distribution and retail networks.
The vast majority of distributor and retailer channels have thousands, if not millions, of individual channel partners. Historically, providing personalisation to such a large number of businesses has not been feasible.
However, with the advent of AI, personalisation at scale is becoming a reality.
Brands can now create tailored engagement journeys for all their partners, based on their partner profiles, through some combination of machine learning models and behavioural segmentation. For example, high-performing distributors might receive higher levels of leadership-based recognition and greater incentives to continue to grow. Emerging retailers, on the other hand, might be supported with training, onboarding rewards, and measurable performance milestones.
The shift towards personalisation of partner engagement echoes the direction that consumer marketing is already moving towards.
According to Salesforce’s report, over 70 per cent of customers expect personalisation in the way that brands engage with them. As such, there is a growing expectation for B2B ecosystems to have these same types of expectations from their channel partners.
Gamification and continuous engagement
AI is also radically changing how brands will engage with their channel partners through the use of gamification.
Many traditional incentive-based contests and leaderboards would spark temporary engagement among their participants, but they struggled to sustain engagement over time. With the use of AI, gamification mechanics are evolving dynamically based on historical and evolving participation patterns by their channel partners.
Challenges, rewards, and recognition structures can be modified continuously in order to sustain engagement with all of a brand’s partner segments. This will provide a greater opportunity to move away from episodic campaigns towards ongoing, continuous engagement experiences.
When channel partners receive motivation as part of their daily business activities through recognition, learning, and tracking their performance, long-term loyalty will be achieved.
Aligning motivation to broader impact
There is a growing trend within the channel ecosystem to integrate sustainability and socially responsible behaviours into the channel partner programmes of brands.
Increasingly, brands are motivating their partners to use sustainable practices in their operations, participate in sustainable practices like sustainability-related knowledge programmes, or promote products that are in line with their sustainability objectives.
Brands can use AI to monitor and measure these types of behaviours and incorporate them into their incentive frameworks so that brands can align their commercial objectives with broader social and environmental outcomes.
A shift in the way brands view their channel partners
AI is having the most significant impact on the way that brands are now viewing their channel partners, as it relates to the underlying philosophy of those fundamental relationships.
For the past several decades, many brands have viewed their channel partners as intermediaries in the supply chain. More and more brands are now beginning to view their channel partners as key ‘partners-in-growth,’ and their actions can have a direct impact on market performance.
In fact, all the channel ecosystems are using behavioural engagement platforms to design new models that reward not just transactional behaviour, but also create continuous engagement journeys for their partners, where their partners can receive recognition for their participation, learning, and continued engagement, thereby reinforcing long-term loyalty to the brand.
The future: Intelligent channel ecosystems
As we consider what the next phase of channel engagement may look like, many believe that it will be based on intelligent ecosystems, using AI to continuously monitor and adjust the engagement strategies used to engage their channel partners, in real time and based on the behaviours of those partners.
For brands operating in complex distribution networks, the ability to perform well will be determined both by whether products are available to their customers, as well as by the enthusiasm, expertise, and loyalty shown from each channel partner that represents the brand each and every day that they are working on behalf of the brand.
While AI clearly does not eliminate the human aspect of a brand’s relationship with its channel partners, it does allow brands to better understand and nurture that relationship.
In markets where the last mile will determine whether a sale is made, how one leverages the intelligence gained by using AI will ultimately be the difference between gaining a new, sustainable competitive advantage versus losing one.
