Brands
Omron’s “Your Voice, Their World” campaign bags Bronze at the 55th CLIO Healthcare Awards
MUMBAI: OMRON has been conferred with Bronze award for its online CSR initiative in India – Your Voice Their World at the 55th Annual CLIO Healthcare Awards. CLIO is the world’s most recognized international competition honouring talent in the fields of advertising & communications and awarding exceptional projects that push the boundaries of creativity in a given medium.
Omron’s initiative was acknowledged amongst a list of notable international entries in the highly competitive innovative media category for the innovative usage of the online medium, its unique appeal & objectives and the communication expertise put in by McCann Health India – Omron’s partner and creative agency for the campaign.
The campaign aims to create India’s largest audio library of poems for visually impaired by engaging the masses to record poems through a dedicated website www.yourvoicetheirworld.com and a mobile application. In a short duration of eight weeks, the campaign saw more than 2400 submissions. Various celebrities also lent their support to this cause by submitting recordings and encouraging their fans to do the same.
The poems are being donated to the National Association for the Blind, New Delhi, which in turn shares it with its own students and thousands of other visually impaired connected through its library network.
Commenting on the achievement, Mr. Takuichi Shimizu, President, OMRON Management Centre of India, said “Rendering Corporate Social Responsibility in a meaningful manner for people with challenging spirit has always been an integral part of Omron’s corporate philosophy. We started the project with the same intent and decided to opt for ‘crowd sourcing’ – contribution of recordings for the visually impaired by the masses. We believed that this concept will not only give us numbers but will also help us in generating awareness about the importance of our support for visually impaired as India has the largest population of blind people in the world*.”
“The concept was given shape in the form of a website and a mobile & facebook application. The usage of online & social media brought convenience & uniqueness. Enthusing the people to come and contribute a poem proved to be very challenging initially, however, the persistent efforts of the whole team, a flexible and effective promotion plan – based on facebook, twitter and focused online portals- paid off eventually. In a span of 8 weeks we were able to collect more than 2400 recordings of poems. We are all set to start the second phase of the campaign very soon.”
The project is an effort to further strengthen Omron’s support to visually impaired people in India to help them fulfil their dreams of education and overall development via audio-based accessible content. The company is also running a Digital Accessible Library of audio and e-books in association with The National Association for the Blind, New Delhi under the same project.
Brands
Dunkin’ Donuts to exit India as Jubilant FoodWorks ends 15-year franchise deal
The quick service restaurant giant is ending a 15-year franchise partnership with the American doughnut chain, even as it renews its Domino’s agreement for another 15 years
NOIDA: Dunkin’ is done in India. Jubilant FoodWorks Ltd, the country’s leading quick service restaurant operator, has decided not to renew its franchise agreement with the American coffee and doughnut chain, and will wind down its Indian stores in a phased manner before December 31, 2026, bringing a 15-year partnership to a quiet, loss-laden close.
The decision, approved by JFL’s board on March 30, 2026, ends a relationship that began with a Multiple Unit Development Franchise Agreement signed on February 24, 2011. JFL will now evaluate and undertake what it described in a regulatory filing as the “rationalisation and/or cessation of certain operations and/or sale, transfer or disposal of assets and/or assignment or transfer of franchise rights,” all in consultation with Dunkin’s brand owners and strictly within the terms of the original agreement.
The numbers tell the story bluntly. In the financial year 2024-25, Dunkin’ India posted a revenue of Rs 37 crore against a loss of Rs 19 crore — a haemorrhage that was always going to test the patience of a parent company recording revenues of Rs 6,104 crore and a profit of Rs 194 crore in the same period. Doughnuts, it turns out, were never going to move the needle.
The contrast with JFL’s handling of its other marquee franchise could hardly be sharper. Even as it walks away from Dunkin’, the company has just doubled down on Domino’s, signing a fresh Master Franchise Agreement on March 31, 2026, granting it exclusive rights to develop and operate Domino’s Pizza stores in India for 15 years, with an option to renew for a further 10.
JFL, incorporated in 1995 and promoted by the Bharatia family, operates a network of more than 3,500 stores across six markets — India, Turkey, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Its portfolio includes Domino’s and Popeyes on the global side, and two home-grown brands: Hong’s Kitchen and COFFY, a café brand in Turkey.
For Dunkin’, India was always a stretch. The brand never quite cracked the cultural code in a market where filter coffee and chai command fierce loyalty and where the doughnut remains, at best, an occasional indulgence rather than a daily habit. Fifteen years, mounting losses and a parent with better things to spend its capital on was always going to be a difficult equation to solve.
The doughnut has had its last day. The pizza, however, is staying.
