75 years of freedom of Indian Outdoor Advertising

This year’s Independence Day holds additional significance and happiness as India is honouring 75 years of Independence and the glorious history of its people, culture, and achievements, as rightly put by the government- ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’. 

Our glorious tale of independence and remarkable development of the country post that gives us a clear lesson to continue the hardship until your dreams don’t become your reality. And these lessons are ingrained by the Indian OOH industry custodians in the form of encouragement and inspiration.

Undoubtedly, the Indian OOH Industry, one of the oldest advertising mediums, has fought various battles to strive, stand tall and remain relevant in this constantly evolving dynamic advertising & marketing world where various new mediums and formats keep emerging in the industry with their glittering ability to glorify brands’ marketing messages.

However, the never-dying spirit of the Indian OOH industry has never bent or stopped fighting its battle to gain respect to be considered as an industry and right for the equal valuation in the marketing pie-chart by the media agencies and leading brands.

The foundation of the OOH industry has always been robust and never bent despite all hardships with its strong willpower for its right, truth, and passion. 

The Indian OOH industry has a momentous history and strong core values to conduct peaceful protests, full cooperation with higher authorities and relevant custodians. 

Last but not the least the Indian OOH industry holds a vision to serve the country and walk on the path to improve the lives of the citizens with improved, beautified, and safe surroundings.

There were many battles fought and successfully won by the Indian OOH industry over the course of years. But one of the hardest battles fought by the Indian OOH industry was not long ago in 2020 with the hit of the pandemic when the outdoor was the only medium to be highly impacted by the consequences of the lockdown such revenue and job losses. 

Nonetheless, the elixir of inspiration of our Indian outdoor industry concessionaires, their willpower, and ability to constantly evolve and innovate, the Indian OOH Industry makes the industry stronger and transforms in the new avatar that becomes difficult to resist for any brand marketer. Starting from posters to billboards to Digital OOH or regular wall painting to digital wall painting or vanilla simple creative to 3D content, the Indian OOH industry always shook the marketing world with its endowment.

And on this special occasion of 75th Independence Day, IOAA recognizes continuously fighting, extremely enthusiastic, and visionary Indian Outdoor companies that have completed 75 years or more in the industry. 

One of the oldest long standings with a strong zest to continue growing and complete 100 years in the Indian OOH Industry, Karukrit Advertising sewed the first ever foundation of the OOH medium in Kolkata in the mid-1930s by Hemant Kr. Saha, a creative artist & visionary at the age of 32 years. Despite being pioneers, Karukrit Advertising is one of the youngest companies in the OOH industry as the industry is constantly in evolution mode, shares Promita Saha Khan , VP, Karukrit Advertising, the third generation of the family running the show.

One of the remarkable OOH campaign for Pather Panchali i.e. Satyajit Ray’s  Indian Bengali-language drama magnum opus was done by Karukrit Advertising. The campaign was hand- painted on billboards which incurred immense creativity invested by the OOH company.  

Promita says that there is a huge potential to do new things and embrace the new developments taking place in the OOH industry in terms of DOOH, Programmatic DOOH & etc. The company is investing in numerous new-age projects to ensure its liveness in the industry. The company is maintaining a balance between traditional format and new age formats by investing in transit, FOB and on-ground events. 

Another strongest company to have survived more than 75 years is Selvel One Group, established by the Late Rusi Gimi along with three others in 1945. The pioneers in introducing ubiquitous 20×10 hoarding that has now become the industry standard size, launching displaying sites on Municipal land for mutual benefit and marketplaces, airport & railway advertising, monopoles, backlit boards, large format printing and the first LED screens in the country.

Talking about the journey of Selvel One Group, the Chairman of the board of the company Noomi Mehta shares, “When I started in 1976, OOH Advertising was probably below 20 crores nationally! The breakthrough in OOH Advertising was when we introduced large format digital printing. The visually perfect images were in stark contrast to the vague hand-painted hoardings. The combination of print and backlighting gave unimaginable impact and suddenly OOH media was thrust into the limelight. OOH media was earlier discussed only in backrooms, but the dramatic impact backlit hoardings were making brought it into the discussion in Board rooms. MMT, with whom we had a Joint Venture, quickly became a catchphrase for all digital printing and even digital pre-production! In those days scanners would cost tens of lakhs of Rupees. 400 dpi was considered state of the art and had a direct impact on the quality of the print. OOH galloped ahead as all luxury goods which avoided OOH because of imperfect displays started preferring this medium to build their larger-than-life Brands”.

The growth of the country is inching towards carving a new recognition as a ‘Self Reliant Country’ and a ‘Global Soft Power’ with strategic investment in technology, digitisation and science.  The Indian OOH Industry is set to write a new future with data, new technologies such as pDooh, AV, VR, MR and Digitisation in terms of assets and formats to be counted amongst leading global OOH markets. 

Jai Hind!!

Image Source - Selvel.com and getbengal.com

Noomi Mehta Jahan Mehta Pramod Bhandula Alok Jalan Anant jain Shailender Luthra Narayanaswami Shekhar VIVEK LAKHWARA Ajay Mehta Sam Balsara Dipankar Sanyal Atul Shrivastava Abhijit Sengupta Prakash Arts Pvt. Ltd. Pawan Bansal Gour Gupta Rachana Lokhande Promita Saha Khan Sreedhar A R Kanan Modak Sunil Kutty Menon