The resulting commercial, titled “10 Years of Unlocking Progress for 70 Crore Indians,” bypasses the standard victory lap. As detailed in the PhonePe official announcement, the company is using its tenth anniversary to mark its presence across digital retail, UPI transfers, and merchant services. Instead of serving those numbers up as a dry corporate deck, the creative team built the entire production around an impossible physical task.

The Problem of Picturing 70 Crore

Big user bases are hard to comprehend. The mind glazes over when tech companies toss around hundreds of millions, because massive numbers stop feeling like actual humans.

To give that scale a tangible shape, the agency brought in Shahu Supreme, a record holder clocked at 494 words every minute. PhonePe hands him the customer list and lets the camera run. Even moving at auctioneer speed, the film notes that naming all 70 crore users without a pause would take 980 straight days. That is two years and eight months of continuous talking.

That simple, absurd equation carries the narrative. It gives the audience a visceral reference point for platform volume, turning an abstract statistic into something that feels physically exhausting.

Putting the Public Ahead of the Platform

By focusing on the roll call, the spot keeps the attention where it belongs: on the street-level users who actually drove UPI adoption over the past ten years.

We often see fintech brands struggle when apps fail to retain audience trust once their introductory ad blitz fades. PhonePe has avoided that pitfall by remaining a fixture of daily commerce, visible on payment stands outside tea stalls, vegetable carts, and corner pharmacies. The ticking counter in the film represents those real transactions, giving the celebration a modest, everyday foundation.

The script does not waste time delivering a lectures on national progress. The sheer ridiculousness of the exercise does the work on its own.

Making Platform Data the Comic Driver

Tech brands usually relegate their user numbers to a tiny disclaimer slide in the final three seconds of a commercial. Here, the number is the joke.

Watching Shahu gasp for air while the digital tally keeps climbing punctures the self-importance that usually plagues corporate milestones. The creative team at Ogilvy India, led by Akshay Seth, treated the scale as an operational nightmare rather than a trophy. The film works because the central premise is obviously doomed from the opening frame: you cannot thank a population this vast, and watching someone try makes for great television.

In the years following Paytm’s early cashless campaigns, Indian payment marketing has grown up. It no longer needs to teach people how to point a phone camera at a sticker. PhonePe using its own data archive as a comedic device proves that digital transactions are now woven into ordinary Indian life.

The Fine Art of De-bloating Corporate Vanity

Most corporate milestone commercials follow an unbearable formula. You get slow pans of small-town shopkeepers, stirring cello music, and an earnest voiceover telling the country how proud the brand is to serve them. The work is usually commissioned to flatter executives rather than entertain viewers. This film cuts through that posturing by taking a giant number and letting its own weight crush the premise.

Casting Shahu Supreme provides immediate comedic tension. By throwing a human voice against an endless digital ledger, the agency demonstrates the scale of 70 crore people far better than any bar graph ever could. The realization that Shahu would still be reading names well into 2029 gives the viewer a sudden, clear sense of how large the user base really is.

Crucially, the film avoids the false intimacy common in brand films. PhonePe never claims to know all 700 million users personally. It admits they are a chaotic, endless crowd. That admission of human limitation makes the gesture feel far more genuine than a standard corporate tribute.

The approach does have one real trade-off. By chaining the script to a single, high-speed joke, the piece leaves out the human stories that built the brand: the rural shopkeeper getting paid instantly, or the family sending money home during an emergency. It trades emotional depth for a sharp gag. Still, for an anniversary ad that could easily have turned into corporate self-congratulation, choosing a self-deprecating laugh was the right call.

Credits
Brand: PhonePe
Campaign: 10 Years of Unlocking Progress for 70 Crore Indians
Agency: Ogilvy India
Creative Team: Akshay Seth and Team
Featured Talent: Shahu Supreme

Entrepreneurship has become more popular than ever before. ‘Becoming your own boss’ has become increasingly attractive. Hence, people prefer investing their time, efforts, and finances on a venture they can address as their own rather than applying for jobs, waiting for their selections, and then working under a manager.
A notable fact is that there has been a significant increase in the number of women initiating their entrepreneurial journey, and the trend gained momentum during the pandemic. While in urban areas, this can be attributed to the availability and accessibility of technology, the internet, and increased use of social media; in rural areas, it is still a budding concept but has been enormously picking up the pace ever since COVID-19 entered our lives.

Due to the adoption of ‘Digital India’ initiatives, digitization is foraying into the rural areas. This has facilitated the rise of women entrepreneurs in rural cities of India. The increase in social media usage has allowed platforms that encourage networking and knowledge sharing to aid in this trend. ChekMarc is a global community where meaningful connections empower members to help each other achieve their goals in a more secure, private, positive and meaningful way. The firm has analyzed key trends in the growth of women entrepreneurs throughout 2020. This report titled, ‘How social media and networking platforms have been a game-changer for women entrepreneurs in rural cities of India’ highlights the increase in women entrepreneurs from rural regions of the country and the factors pushing their growth.

Highlights of the report
The report’s findings are based on the trends observed in the year 2020, immediately following the pandemic in the rural cities of Agra, Indore, Surat, Bhubhaneshwar, Bhopal, Kanpur, Madurai, Nellore, Guntur, and Kota, just to name a few.

• The percentage of women working at the forefront during the pandemic was higher when compared to men
• The male-dominated culture is slowly fading away, paving the way for female entrepreneurs
• Rural cities have witnessed a surge in women entrepreneurs, with the present entrepreneurship- figure standing approximately at 62%
• Internet penetration in rural areas is attempting to match the levels of urban regions and has led to the emergence of start-up ventures, especially by women in the rural cities
• Increased accessibility and affordability of smartphones and the internet has helped in digitization, thereby facilitating the increase of female entrepreneurship
• Increased smartphone usage during the lockdown coupled with data packs and special offers, reducing cost, further pushed the rising of women entrepreneurs amongst the rural cities
• Out of the 62% female entrepreneurs, the majority of them are homepreneurs, and the rest are professional sellers
• The top categories in which the women entrepreneurs are venturing into are health, especially feminine hygiene, beauty, fashion, home, lifestyle, food, home-cooked food, etc.
• A considerable percentage of these females prefer using e-commerce platforms like Amazon to sell their products

This growth is primarily due to-

• Provision of infrastructural facilities
• Accessibility of internet and social media
• Seamless power supply ensuring accessibility of the internet and smartphone usage 24×7 without interruptions
• Favorable working conditions and required support from the loved ones
• The abundance of talent and labour amongst females
• Increase in awareness and education levels
• Digitization of rural markets
• The female population is eager and keen to acquire the requisite skills and undergo relevant training to start new ventures

The Indian start-up ecosystem has welcomed women entrepreneurs with open arms, and this trend is indeed picking up pace. Over the past decade, female entrepreneurship increased at a nominal rate. However, the pandemic came as a blessing in disguise and drove the growth of this trend. The outcome was that women entrepreneurs from the rural cities got an opportunity to come out of their shells and kick their entrepreneurial journey.

How social media and networking platforms empower women entrepreneurs

Social media and networking platforms are powerful tools in the present times. They play an essential role in empowering women entrepreneurs, especially in rural cities, in various ways. Some of the significant ways through which they extend a helping hand is by-

• Helping women connect with existing and prospective consumers
• Enabling them to connect and enforce the creation of a network or community that fosters a collaborative environment
• Giving them the flexibility to work from home while simultaneously managing their homes and families
• Giving them a platform to transform their dream or concept into a business venture
• Providing them access to necessary training and resources
• Accessing business activities and deals from the comfort of their homes
• Helping increase their sales and revenue
• Helping them build their brand
• Helping bridge the technical gap by providing necessary training to build knowledge and skills

Despite the pandemic, women in rural cities saw that time as an opportunity and worked hard to turn the situation by initiating their entrepreneurial journey. Increased penetration of social media and networking platforms has allowed females to convert their passion into a source of income.

Women entrepreneurs think out of the box and aim to mark their presence in new markets. They work hard to come up with innovative products and tap into unknown markets. Examples include business-focused schools, eco-friendly sanitary and hygiene products, unique kitchen products, etc. Rural females specifically have realized the need to be independent and financially stable.

Today India has 13.5–15.7 million women-owned enterprises, and they represent 20% of all enterprises as reported by Google and Bain and Company. This is indeed a huge number, and it is mainly comprised of single-person enterprises, which provide direct employment for an estimated 22 to 27 million people. However, the alarming truth is that a majority of females are household managers and homemakers. A minority of females step outside to work. Women have to face structural, social, economic barriers and challenges of stereotyping and biases.

Inc 42’s Analysis by Datalabs shows that only 20% of the total startups in India are based in Rural and Tier 3 cities, with over 5,800 startups in Rural cities alone. Funding of $87 Mn was raised outside of the tier 1 cities in 2020 compared to $234 Mn raised in 2019. Additionally, rural solopreneurs comprise approximately 38% share of the women entrepreneurship ecosystem.

One of Cisco’s reports states that while India’s population is estimated to touch 1.42 billion by 2023, we are already using 1.5 billion-plus connected devices. The same report also indicates that by 2023, India’s internet users are expected to cross the 900 million mark with connected devices touching a figure of 2.1 billion by then. This implies that mobile phones’ increased use will eventually lead to a rise in social media and networking platforms usage, thereby carving the path for women entrepreneurs, especially in rural cities, to come forward and pursue their dreams.

Sharing his/her views on the emerging era of women entrepreneurs in rural cities of India, Vrinda Johnson, Chief of Strategy & Operations at ChekMarc, Inc., said, ‘’What often goes unnoticed is that when provided with equal resources, women-owned ventures produce equally strong outcomes. They play a major role in the economic sphere rather than playing a peripheral one. Women entrepreneurs make way for social and economic prosperity. The interesting bit is that they are now realizing the power of entrepreneurship and that it will give them the opportunity to be more independent. Rural cities of India are moving towards the adoption of digitization and the female population is making use of the available resources and utilizing them optimally to come up with their ventures and initiate their start-up journey. It is indeed joyful to witness this trend of the emergence of women entrepreneurs, especially from the rural areas. We are glad that social media and social networking platforms have given the required push to driving this shift during the pandemic. It is these positive outcomes that make us believe that the purpose of having such platforms is fulfilled- to create an engaging community where people come forward to help each other and ensure the provision of relevant opportunities to the community members for their growth. Having said this, we anticipate that women entrepreneurs from the rural cities will soon be at the forefront and we are glad to have been a part of this women entrepreneurship-driven era.’’