Facebook ad shows resilience of The Moms Co., Sleepy Owl Coffee and Doodlage during COVID

Social media giant Facebook has unveiled a new campaign film ‘Nayi Shuruaat’. It is an ode to the resilience of India’s small businesses during the COVID pandemic. The two-minute-long film shows how small businesses, like The Moms Co., Doodlage and Sleepy Owl Coffee, made a new start and have grown this year (2020) on the back of their Facebook community.

On the second day of Facebook’s inaugural ‘Fuel for India 2020’ event, a keynote session was held on how the company is partnering with large and small businesses to fuel the economic transformation of the country. There were sessions by diverse small, medium and large businesses, such as WhiteHat Jr., Maruti Suzuki, Mondelez, The Moms Co., Licious, Karagiri, Wingreens Farms and Vasthram Silk.

Highlighting Facebook’s commitment to the economic recovery of India, Ajit Mohan, MD and VP at Facebook India, said, “Even as India locked down in response to the pandemic, the Internet remained open, enabling businesses to reach their customers, sell and even grow. Amidst these remarkable shifts, it has been exciting to see the creation of new economic opportunities. It has also been humbling to see the Facebook family of apps play a central role in enabling many businesses to make a new start by moving online.”

Speaking about the campaign, Malika Sadani, co-founder, The Moms Co., said, “We turned to our Facebook and Instagram communities to grow in these times. Over the last few months, we've done regular engagements, interactions and Lives to engage, learn and even institute new product development processes. As a result, we have seen triple the traffic on our website, and our business has grown 200 per cent from pre-COVID levels.”

At the event, Archana Vohra, director, small and medium businesses, Facebook India, led a fireside chat talking to four women-led small businesses that have succeeded in leveraging digital to grow their businesses during these challenging times.

“Facebook’s goal has always been to enable new opportunities for businesses, especially for the more than 60 million small businesses across India. Every day, we see amazing examples of SMBs using the Facebook family of apps to pivot, make a new start and grow through this particularly challenging time. Through the ‘Facebook Fuel for India’ event, we hope to tell stories that inspire millions small businesses and entrepreneurs across the country to navigate through this crisis,” said Vohra.

During the fireside chat, Pallavi Mohadikar, CEO and founder, Karagiri, spoke of how it supported its weaver community and launched a Diwali collection first on Instagram before rolling it out on the website.

Sunitha Sivakumar, proprietor and designer, Vasthram Silk, said, “As people had a lot of free time and were spending their leisure hours on social media, we believed that pushing our budget-friendly collection and posting daily advertisements across Facebook and Instagram was of great help to us. It made us grow throughout the crucial period of the pandemic. With WhatsApp, we were able to connect personally with our customers, which also led to a huge surge in sales.”

Meghna Apparao, chief business officer, Licious, spoke about how her company hustled, pivoted and introduced a ‘Notify Me’ feature on the app. This feature was integrated with WhatsApp, which enabled real-time messages to consumers when products became available.