The story of Niyo’s IPL ads with Vinay Bagri and Sanjay Swamy

Vinay Bagri, the CEO of NIYO SOLUTIONS, is a fintech stalwart who has spent 18 years in the corporate world working with organisations like Parle, 3M, ICICI Bank, Standard Chartered, ING, and Kotak Mahindra Bank.

Sanjay, the host of this podcast, is currently the Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners. A fintech entrepreneur himself, he was earlier the Chairman & Co-founder of Ezetap (acquired by Razorpay) and CEO of mChek.

In this episode, Vinay breaks down the backstory of each of the four ads of Niyo that were telecasted on television and other digital platforms throughout the IPL 2024 season. He says, viewers/listeners will be able to learn valuable skills on the end-to-end lifecycle of what it takes for a brand to feature their brand ads on the mega IPL stage. Vinay illustrates that they identified the problem statement the customers have at large and how their specific value proposition will solve that using Niyo’s products and services. He proudly says, Niyo marries the boring world of banking with the exciting world of travel!

Referring to the first advertisement, Zero = Hero (No Forex Markup), Vinay says, "this ad represents our core value proposition that when you travel abroad, the last thing you want is to calculate the amount of forex charge for every product you are buying. And hence, zero forex is our primary offering where you don’t have to worry. You just swipe your card and whatever is the interbank rate for the day, an amount very close to that will be charged to you. We, as Niyo, have created a niche in the space where your usual debit card or credit card becomes a forex card and it is 100% transparent. You can use it on your app. So, the idea was to just bring that experience to what a user goes through normally and then what it would be like if it was Niyo."

Vinay explains, “the idea was to take a real journey where travellers are spending and realise they have four, five percent value to pay extra if they use a typical travel card, forex card, credit card, whatever it is. At the end of the ad, we show the Niyo way, travellers shouldn’t worry, it’s as if they’re shopping in India, so they can shop for better items than just the undergarments, is the idea here if you use Niyo.”

In the second ad, Trip Planned But No Visa? (Visa On Time, Every time), Vinay tells us, “when we were talking to our own customers after solving the forex issue, the answer was can you get us a visa next time when we travel and make that process simple, efficient, because otherwise they depend on the travel agent who charges 30% to 50% of the visa cost. Interestingly, out of 180 countries now, almost 50 countries have electronic stamps, so you don’t need to do anything. You upload your documents automatically and your visa will come as an e-stamp, so it is basically completely electronic."

And about the Ad, "the reason there was an Australian accent there is their visa is extremely uncertain and travellers are stuck normally, especially the large student diaspora that travels to Australia."

In the Hide & Seek (Free International ATM Withdrawals) advertisement, “the message here is that 93% of Indians, when they travel abroad, carry lots of cash with them, which is fine. You want to be averse of risk, you want to ensure that when you land there, at least you have cash to take a taxi to the hotel and for any emergency situations, which is fair. But beyond that, carrying cash as your primary way of spending abroad really doesn’t make sense. You will have the challenges of it getting lost and the issues with customs is a real pain. The real reason people are carrying cash is because they are still thinking ATM withdrawals abroad charges are going to be disproportionately high, but actually the truth is it’s similar to withdrawing in India," he says.

“We chose Vietnam because it’s an extremely popular tourist destination currently for Indians and interestingly Vietnam is also a very cash-heavy economy. And Mongolia as you might guess is not a very popular destination,” Vinay laughs it off.

The fourth ad, Are You A Rejection Magnet? (Accepted in 180+ countries), is a very common occurrence, says Vinay. “The first problem is, Indian debit cards come with several abroad locks that need prior work for it to be fully functional. Problem no. two is most banks go conservative and force a user to give a declaration that they’re going to travel abroad to allow international transactions as they want to protect their user from data theft and several scamsters that exist.”

About this specific ad, we wanted to tell our Niyo users how they can use our card abroad for example, “if you want to do an experience also, so let’s say you are in Paris and you don’t want to get into a line to get to Eiffel Tower, you can just use Niyo and avoid all the crowd.”

Vinay ends the conversation by saying people have loved these advertisements and created significant impact on their business, brand, and recognition among the larger customer base.

Timestamps:

Watch/listen to learn more about the podcast:

0:00 - About Niyo

9:32 - Niyo's aolution for simplifying visas

14:08 - Tips for traveling abroad

23:39 - International travel trends and behaviours

31:40 - Conclusion