The booming economy is turning out to be a great boon for the wideformat and signage industry in India. The signage industry can look forward to a major boost with a new pilot project started by the Indian Railways. This pilot project could lead to the railways in earning additional revenue by licensing advertisements on its trains, stations and tickets and host of other things, and its passengers would benefit from better signage, services and cleaner carriages.

The pilot project gives prominence to the role of fleet graphics inside and outside the railway carriage of the trains that have been initially selected for the trial. A Public Private Partnership (PPP) business model has been adopted and ultimately the railways stand to earn at least an extra Rs 500 crore each year. This pilot project points to a huge signage opportunity and potentially revolutionizes the business model for many types of public and private transport services throughout the country.

On the evening of April 8, with great ceremony, the first train garlanded with flowers and decorated with supergraphics outside and posters within, headed out from Nizamuddin station in Delhi to Bangalore. Northern Railway officials gave the green flag and although the Railway minister himself was expected he obviously couldn’t be there. The Rajdhani covered with wide format graphics standing on an old railway station was inspiring. The coach exteriors were fully wrapped with high quality photorealistic printed vinyl with Bharti Airtel’s logo and brand promotion messages. Inside the neatly designed Airtel posters framed in gleaming aluminium gave a totally new look to the Railway coach interiors. Having seen fleet on airplanes and airline buses within airports we were impressed, but what the railways has embarked on can scale up gigantically with far reaching implications in time.

Even the main advertising sponsor Airtel’s slogan, ‘Breaking the Barriers’ seemed appropriate for the event. The new and innovative concept adopted by the railway pilot project points to new and innovative opportunities for the signage industry.

Peacock Media – the contractor
The principal contractor of the Indian Railways pilot project and sole advertisement rights holder is Mumbai based Peacock Media Limited, an out-of-home (OOH) life style media company with expertise in indoor and outdoor visual communication concepts and solutions. Peacock Media have sold the advertisement space to Airtel initially and as contracted will also look after the cleaning and housekeeping of the coaches in the three trains – the Trivandrum, Chennai and Bangalore Rajdhanis. The contract for one year has come to Peacock at a cost of Rs. 75 lakh per annum. The revenue from advertisements will go to Peacock.

In this context we spoke with Sandeep Chawla and Kuljit Suri, the joint managing directors of Peacock Media Limited. “Peacock Media is an eight year old organization and is one of India’s first ISO 9001:2000 company in the OOH segment. We started our company with the name of Absolute Prints India PL and recently changed it to Peacock Media Limited. Our main base is in Mumbai where we have a 30,000 square feet set up at Mira Road with two HP Scitex TurboJet 8500 large format printers, two HP DesignJet Z6100s, two HP Indigo 5500s, two solvent machines from Teckwin and one UV flatbed from Teckwin and other machines. With a staff of 75 people we operate all over India and have branch offices in various cities,” said Mr. Chawla.

Talking about the project Sandeep Chawla said, “It is a unique and one of the first projects of the Indian Railways employing the PPP revenue model. The main advantages will be that the passengers will get clean coaches, the Indian Railway will save money as the high quality vinyl on the exterior would protect the coaches from the diversified weather and climate they pass through. The technology used would protect the coaches in climatic conditions from -7 to 70 degrees centigrade. The railway would earn good revenue from the license fees. It is a deal which is profitable for everyone.”

On the advantages for the signage industry he said, “I can say that this is the starting point for fleet graphics in India in the right way. Railways trains are a very powerful medium for visual communication across borders. This beginning would provide more inroads for future development of signage and wideformat industry in India.”

Asked about the exterior vinyl product used for wrapping the coaches he said, “We have been able to deliver a high quality product to the Indian Railways with technology support from HP. We have used controlled tech cast vinyl for this specific product. The printing of the exterior vinyl has been done on HP Scitex TurboJet 8500 UV machines. We had installed two of these in Mumbai this year and we are the only company in Asia to have two machines. As we had very stringent guidelines from Indian Railway authorities the printing was a big challenge. We had to follow the RDSO guidelines set by the Ministry of Railways which sets the technical specifications of the vinyl and inks to be used and the type of advertisements allowed.”