Sign up for afaqs! Newsletters
Western Railways to get 4,000 LCD screens on trains
Hype Integracomm will install these and pay a licence fee of Rs 35 crore to Western Railways for five years
Train commuters in Mumbai will now get used to seeing sleek LCD screens displaying content and advertisements in their compartments. OOH media company Hype Integracomm has entered into a private-public partnership with Western Railways in Mumbai to install LCD screens in all of its 67 trains.
The contract is valid for five years and will function on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis. Till now, 72 screens have been installed in the first phase. Around 4,000 screens will be installed in all, with six screens in each coach of the nine and 12 coach trains. While Hype Integracomm will earn revenue from the advertisements on the screens, Western Railways will get a licence fee of Rs 35 crore for the duration of the contract.
On January 9, Shamsunder Gupta, chief public relations officer, Western Railways, inaugurated the new facility at the Mumbai Central car shed. L Jaipal Reddy, chairperson, Hype Integracomm, L Vinay Reddy, managing director, Hype Integracomm, and Jignesh Sharma, executive director and chief executive officer, Hype Integracomm, were also present on the occasion.
To start with, the screens will show recorded content. However, the company is developing solutions for real-time content as well. Apart from being an innovative advertising medium with great reach, these screens will also be a good medium for presenting socially relevant messages.
Discussing the categories which could benefit from advertising on the medium, he says, “I believe screens like these offer a wide reach to advertisers from sectors such as FMCG, financial products, automobiles and lifestyle.”
The TV screens will be seen by the large number of Western Railway (Churchgate to Dahanu Road) commuters, which translates to more than 2.6 million passengers per day – almost 43 per cent of Mumbai’s total suburban rail traffic.
For the record, Hype Integracomm owns media assets in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune. The media assets are in the form of bus shelters, bus bays, green kiosks (tree guards), mobile toilets and public utilities. In Bengaluru, Hype is associated with the Nirmala chain of toilets, a project of the Infosys Foundation.