Jagran Engage on an acquisition spree

The Jagran Group’s OOH media division has acquired the ad rights to bus shelters in Mumbai, bus stands all over Uttar Pradesh and the Moradabad railway station

Jagran Engage, the out of home (OOH) division of the Jagran Group, is on an acquisition spree. The company recently acquired 53 designer bus shelters in Mumbai for a period of 10 years.

It has also bagged the exclusive marketing rights for the OOH media points at Moradabad (Uttar Pradesh) railway station and at important bus stations of the Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corp. (UPSRTC). The bus stations include those in Bareilly, Kaushambi, Ghaziabad, Noida, Lucknow and Kanpur (Zhakarkati).

Commenting on the Mumbai bus shelter acquisition, Pawan Bansal, vice-president and business head, Jagran Engage, says in an official release, “Jagran Engage has consciously decided to invest in street furniture and other emerging media and this acquisition is a big leap forward in that direction. We are indeed very happy with this foray. It allows us to offer a better spread to our advertisers with our billboards, kiosks and bus shelters.”

Pawan Bansal

The bus shelters are spread across Mumbai and cover both premium locations and upcoming ones. Jagran Engage strongly believes that advertisers can leverage the salience of the media to execute meaningful and sustainable campaigns as well as cutting edge, innovative concepts. It wants to work with advertisers to move away from plain cutouts to creating “wow” formats.

Of the 53 Mumbai bus shelters, 39 are already installed; the rest will come up in the next fortnight.

Bansal says about the media acquisitions in Uttar Pradesh, “It’s been our endeavour to be present in Tier II and Tier III towns as a part of our growth plans. We started off with Aligarh in the beginning of this year and we are happy to have won the contracts in other towns in one of the largest states in the country.”

Kamla Nehru Park bus shelter in Mumbai

Moradabad is one of the busiest railway stations of north India and acts as an important station on all major long route trains, especially those plying between North and East India. “Sixty-eight long distance trains pass daily through Moradabad and we are sure that our unique value proposition and some of the new initiatives that we are planning to take will attract interest from advertisers. They will be able to take advantage of complete branding in the entire station premises,” says Bansal.

He adds, “We have had the rights to the Charbagh railway station in Lucknow for more than two years now and we hope to use our experience there of offering the best services and innovative branding opportunities in Moradabad station as well.” The company was unwilling to share details about the acquisition costs of these media.

Moradabad Station

As part of the rollout plan, Jagran Engage has already built the media points at Moradabad railway station and the UPSRTC bus stands. It plans to add 23,000 sq. ft of OOH media space across all the bus stands it has acquired.

Bansal adds, “We are investing heavily in the development of world class media in the smaller towns and also in the systems and processes, to make sure our clients continue to enjoy the same level of servicing standards as in bigger towns.”

For the record, Jagran Engage has been in the OOH space for a little more than two years. During this period, it has developed media in Delhi and the national capital region, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Aligarh, Allahabad, Bareilly, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Moradabad and Kolkata.

Some of the key clients serviced by the agency are Mohan Clothings, Innocean Worldwide, Vishal Mega Mart, Usha International, PepsiCo, The Times of India, Castrol, DLF and Allied Blenders & Distillers.

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