By Veetika Deoras
Head – Brand Marketing, Corporate Communication &
Digital Vertical, Tata Capital
My journey at Tata Capital began as part of the core team that worked on the company’s formation. Later on, as the head of brand marketing, I was required to create the brand, a newborn from over a 100-year-old business group. The task was to unite the various offerings under a greater purpose which is how we coined our brand promise: ‘We only do what’s right for you’ or ‘Karein wahi jo aapke liye sahi’.
Last year, Tata Capital decided to extend this philosophy and we launched the ‘Do Right Initiative’. At its launch, we premiered the ‘Do Right’ song written by Gulzar, composed by Shankar, Ehsaan, Loy, and sung by Shankar Mahadevan. We were fortunate to have Indian classical artistes such as Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, Ustaad Zakir Hussain and Ustaad Amjad Ali Khan join the initiative with their own musical renditions of the ‘Do Right’ song. Subsequently, we launched ‘Do Right Half Stories – the Journey of Doing Right’, an initiative which takes place both on-ground and on Digital. One half stems from everyday stories of courage, perseverance and determination, and the other half stems from ordinary citizens who can step in and help complete these stories.
One of the most heart-warming stories was that of a school near the Indo-Nepal border that needed blackboards and stationery. The school with two classrooms was being run by a retired teacher. The Do Right initiative sprang to action and crowd-funded blackboards and stationery kits for the school, with the help of strangers from our Digital platforms who agreed to donate.
Encouraged by the response and support, the Do Right initiative launched its second season. This time around, we are identifying and highlighting the key challenges facing our country. As a first step, we ran an online survey, Tata Capital India4India, on our microsite and asked people to vote for what they thought are the most critical challenges that need to be resolved. We closed the survey with over 5,000 votes and the top five challenges that emerged were: basic healthcare, illiteracy, food scarcity, women empowerment and child rights. Our attempt now is to highlight these challenges through the powerful route of storytelling.
These initiatives help Tata Capital connect with customers as individuals. A left-brain oriented individual reads it as higher awareness and consideration, which translates to higher off-take. A right-brained person often reads it as warm space in the minds of the customers. We strongly believe that doing right is intrinsic to individuals, and consequently must be intrinsic to companies as well. It cannot and must not be limited to the corporate sustainability initiatives of companies and should morph itself into the over-riding philosophy of the company, which is what Tata Capital has done.
After all, as the philosopher Winnie the Pooh sings, “Nothing can go wrong, if everything is right…”
Feedback
