The Campaign

We conducted a primary research on the concept of P2P lending among media, financial planners, along with prospective lenders and borrowers to gauge their opinion. The findings were: • Lack of awareness about the genre • Negative perception or low confidence among prospective lenders as P2P lending was not regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country’s banking regulator Our creative idea: We recommended that Faircent.com launch an extensive media outreach programme to raise awareness on P2P lending and also seek RBI intervention to regulate the sector. We were convinced that given the capital-starved scenario among small businesses, the media coverage on the benefits of P2P lending would attract the regulator’s attention towards this genre of lending. From our past experience, we knew that any RBI intervention would bring in the much-needed legitimacy into P2P lending, and would attract prospective lenders.

Execution

In January 2016, the agency drew out a communication plan for the first six months of the year. The plan had the following E-lements: • Educate: Spread awareness about P2P lending among prospective lenders, financial planners and media through continuous engagements. We focused on only earned media across traditional and digital media platforms while reaching out to our TG. Given that the outreach programme targeted lenders, the choice of media was primarily English and not the many regional languages prevalent in India • Establish: Our communication highlighted that individuals can earn as much as 18-24% as interest (against bank FDs offering 8%) or borrow amounts from $450 to $7,500. This generated positive vibes towards P2P lending. Faircent.com’s Founder and CEO Rajat Gandhi seeking RBI intervention to regulate the sector was a critical part of establishing the P2P platform’s credibility • Evolve: Position Faircent as the leading P2P lending platform

Media: In our media outreach programme, we met 30 senior journalists/Editors across key financial centres resulting in 70 positive print impressions, notching a collective outreach of 250 million people and $25 million AVE. Faircent currently enjoys the maximum SOV in its genre. Non-media: Our engagement with financial planners and chartered accountants (key influencers in financial planning) led to more than 200% increase in the number of lenders/borrowers from 2,400 and 13,000 to over 6,000 and 26,000 respectively, during January-July, 2016. Transactions volume also increased from $223,880 to $895,522 during this period. Our efforts towards RBI intervention and media coverage on P2P lending drew the regulator’s attention. In April 2016, it published a first-of-its-kind discussion paper on P2P lending – acknowledging its potential benefits. Interbrand recognised Faircent as the only financial brand from India in its ‘Breakthrough Brands Global List’ in 2016.

The Situation

While peer-to-peer lending or P2P lending is fairly common in economies such as the US, the EU, the UK and China, the Indian market got introduced to this concept only in 2014 – when Fairassets Technologies launched Faircent.com. This case study illustrates how the PR firm – only through sustained public relations efforts and zero advertising – contributed to the growth of this nascent form of lending in India and helped Faircent become the leading player in its genre.

The Strategy

Towards the first objective of building awareness around P2P lending, we decided to reach out to the following categories of individuals: • 500 prospective lenders from the salaried and/or the self-employed • 50 leading financial planners, who advised large numbers of high networth individuals • 30 influential journalists who wrote on personal finance The cities chosen included: Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. We selected these five cities as these reported higher per capita income vis-à-vis other Indian cities. We also relied on the historical data that these cities contributed to the largest chunk of retail investments in mutual funds and IPOs over the last decade. While there was no direct correlation between investing in an IPO and P2P lending, our logic was that those individuals, who understood the risks involved in an IPO, might not be averse to becoming lenders on a P2P platform.