MAM
Insurance on the move with HDFC Ergo’s OOH ride
MUMBAI: HDFC Ergo has just made your commute a little more secure, at least in spirit. The general insurance giant, in partnership with Posterscope India, has rolled out a campaign that turns everyday travel hubs into larger-than-life reminders of trust and protection.
The spotlight is on Mumbai’s Airport road metro station, chosen for its steady stream of office-goers and long dwell times. For the next three years, everything from bus queue shelters to station spaces will serve as living billboards for the brand, making HDFC Ergo a familiar companion on thousands of daily journeys.
“Branding the Airport road metro station is not just about scale, it is about connection,” said Posterscope India CEO Imtiyaz Vilatra. “We see OOH not just as advertising, but as a way to naturally integrate brands into people’s lives.”
With every wait at a shelter and every ride through the station, commuters will find HDFC Egro quietly weaving itself into the fabric of their routine, a brand that travels with them, rain or shine.
MAM
Smytten appoints Shishir Varma as CEO of Pulseai Research
Rebranded AI platform scales with 150 plus clients and 30 million users.
MUMBAI: In a world obsessed with what consumers say, Smytten is betting on what they actually do. The company has appointed Shishir Varma as chief executive officer of Pulseai Research, signalling a sharper push into AI-led, behaviour-driven consumer insights. The move comes as Smytten rebrands its insights vertical from Smytten PulseAI to Pulseai Research, marking a shift away from traditional, project-based research towards a more continuous, intelligence-led model.
Varma brings over 30 years of global experience across APAC markets, including India, China and Japan. Most recently managing director, Insights at Kantar Japan, he has built and scaled consumer insight businesses across geographies, including playing a key role in establishing Millward Brown in India. His mandate now: turn Pulseai into a category-defining platform in a space still dominated by surveys and static reports.
The pitch is straightforward but ambitious. Instead of relying on claimed responses, Pulseai Research taps into observed behaviour leveraging Smytten’s ecosystem of 30 million users built over a decade of product discovery, trials and purchases. The idea is to close the long-standing gap between what consumers claim and how they actually behave.
The numbers suggest early traction. In under 18 months, the platform has onboarded over 150 enterprise clients across sectors, pointing to growing demand for faster, more reliable alternatives to legacy research models.
Under the hood, the platform blends behavioural data with AI and large language model-led analysis to deliver real-time sentiment tracking, scalable qualitative insights, faster quantitative studies and always-on brand intelligence. In practical terms, that means compressing research timelines from weeks to days without sacrificing depth.
The ambition extends beyond FMCG. Pulseai Research is positioning itself as a cross-category intelligence layer, spanning auto, education, gadgets and emerging consumer segments anywhere behaviour-rich data can sharpen decision-making.
For Smytten, the leadership hire is less about optics and more about direction. With Varma at the helm, the company is leaning into a simple but powerful premise: in the age of AI, insight isn’t just about asking better questions, it’s about watching more closely.
