The Campaign

The Indian Fintech landscape is extremely diverse. We had to craft a defined narrative for Vizag to stand out from other domestic tech hubs and to elicit a clear battle-cry worthy of international focus. We mapped domestic & International funding in Fintech to growth trajectories of Global Fintech Hubs like Singapore & Tel Aviv and Vizag's competitive advantages to identify our playbook. Most innovations in advanced fintech ecosystems, held a consumer-centric view and held value in a micro-segment like payments. As a fund-of-funds, we decided to position Fintech Valley Vizag as the Destination for Industrial Scale Disruption as a foundation to our blue-ocean strategy. Focus areas like Cybersecurity and Blockchain seamlessly fit into this picture as a port city like Vizag has ample avenues of industry (Port, Steel) to be disrupted and reborn. With the state's strong historic tech leadership and nimble governance, this appealed to investors and startups uniquely.

Execution

Timeline: 180 days from September 2017. Strategically and periodically engaged with India’s leading national finance and technology editors and new media, cementing the purpose and vision of Fintech Valley Vizag. Video-based content was promoted for optimum engagement and was key to our storytelling, with a view to draft success stories for the nation's strongest Fintech Startup Journeys. We co-created and curated a content storyboard, suggesting a published story arc that would establish legitimacy, provide opportunities for disruptions, promote partnerships and eventually reflect the genesis of new fintechs through it's accelerator program. Strategic national and international media outreach would showcase use-cases, MOU signings with Indian and International firms, case-studies of scalable disruptive pilots developed by the first cohort of startups. Engagements with the IT Minister and the Special Secretary showcased entrepreneurial spirit, investment and growth of startups.

We forged the future of Fintech Valley Vizag as a sought after destination for Fintech startups and investors. Of particular interest is the change in behaviours of the investment and startup community to see Vizag as a great place for doing business and one that can nurture and grow fintech startups. Business Impact: 1) MoUs signed: 15 2) Created over 5,500 jobs in 2017 3) Attracted 900$ million in investment 4) Over 60 startups applied to be part of the 1st cohort of the Fintech Valley Accelerator and even more for the cohort that followed. Earned Media Impact: 1) Featured in the Five top centers of innovation in financial tech by Raconteur, a London based current affairs periodical that partners with The Times (UK) and Sunday Times (UK) for special reports 2) Recognised at the World Economic Forum for use of Blockchain in protecting digital transactions and preventing fraud, among other use-cases. 3) Over 500 articles across national and local media publications with over 75 media attendees for various events and more than Social Media impact: 1) 16.5 Million organic impressions across the web with 200% ROI on production spends alone. 2) Over a thousand unique authors discussed Fintech Valley Vizag online including Ministry, corporates, VC's, startups and media 4) Over 9000 page likes and 85000 content likes on Facebook, organically in the 180 days of engagement. 5) Higher than industry standard engagement rates on all social media channels.

The Situation

MSL India created and rolled-out an integrated communication strategy spanning across PR, Digital, and Content Marketing to promote and establish Fintech Valley Vizag as an emerging fintech hub in India and globally. The impact created not only accelerated the desired positioning due to increase in visibility among various stakeholders including and not limited to Financial Institutions, International and Domestic investors, Fintech Startups & Venture Capital Funds, but also succeeded in crystallizing national and international media presence for the brand. The content-led approach through videos and social channels secured in excess of 16.5 Million impressions organically besides print media.

The Strategy

Target Audience: Global and local Venture Capitalists, Start-ups and Accelerators, International and Indian financial institutions, Educational Institutions, Government, Media and influencers Planning and Approach: Promote Vizag as the go-to fintech destination: Establish the legitimacy of Fintech Valley Vizag, and reduce barriers of engagement. We presented a repository of use-case challenges for startups to adopt, prototype development hackathons for industry partners and communicated developments in funding and partnerships. Solidify leadership credentials and demonstrate commitment to the ecosystem through strategic collaborations and successes. We designed a four pillar strategy to execute this prodigious vision of the Andhra Pradesh government. A rich and powerful content strategy to amplify Earned and Owned media on four key areas – Leadership, Ecosystem, Accelerator and Partnerships (LEAP) Lead and own macro fintech conversations in the country, thereby creating national resonance and acceptance - aligning all our conversations to ‘Cyber security, financial technologies and blockchain technologies