Media4Growth Partners with Digital Dot Rural Conference and Flame Awards, 2016

Digital Dot Rural Conference and Flame Awards, 2016 to reward the work on rural marketing kicked off at Vivanta by Taj, Swarka, New Delhi on March 11, 2016 with Media4Growth as their publicity partner. The conference saw a series of sessions on brand positioning, effective marketing  and tools to overcome hurdles in the rural market. Gulzar Azad, Head of Access Programs at Google India spoke about roping in 400 Indian railway stations into wifi zone to extend the power of internet in rural market. Talking further on the subject, Bansari Vyas, Industry Strategy Leader, Digital Marketing, South Asia, Adobe, said, "We should come up with more experiences than commoditisation to position our products in rural market and we should not be dependent on bandwidth of internet connectivity in rural market.”

KV Sridhar, Chief Creative Officer, Sapient Nitro India emphasised on not under-estimating rural customers treating them only by data and statistics and pointed out that rural customers are not way different than their urban counterparts most of the time. Prabhakar Tiwari, CMO, PayU suggested to introduce collaborative payment options when it comes to tapping more rural market.  Sourav Shah, Head of Digital, Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services, discussed the importance of vernacular sites and literature on online platform to penetrate through rural market. Sankalp Potbhare, Head - Business Strategy and Sales Development, Reckitt & Benckiser, explained Vriddhi, an interesting POSM tracking system that is working for their products in rural market.

Amarjeet Batra, CEO, Olx, explaine, "Interestingly, 40% of our traffic today comes from tier-III cities and rural market has shown a sharp upturn with materials like tractors, cattles are traded through an online platform like OLX.” Raghuram Devarakonda, MD and Lead, Advanced Customer Strategy, Accenture India stressed on taking women customers more seriously. Surya Narayan, Head of Digital, Hungama, said, "It's all about storytelling. A great content create lot of spillovers for a brand.”

The following evening saw a glittering award ceremony recognizing the heroes of rural marketing.

The Flame Awards 2016 winners list can be viewed here.