Kolkata Metro plans for exclusive station branding rights

Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation is looking to award complete station branding rights, branding of rakes under the ‘Own Your Station’ scheme to boost the corporation’s non-fare revenues. Corporate houses and brands would enjoy high visibility through these branding initiatives and the Metro Corporation would earn significant revenues to bridge its revenue shortfalls. The network could offer branding rights on 24 stations.

In this, Kolkata Metro is perhaps guided by the model pursued by Delhi Metro and Gurgaon Rapid Metro Services, whereby the station name itself has been branded -- like Guru Dronacharya Stations has become Indigo Guru Dronacharya Station, ITO has become JK Tyre ITO, Shivaji Stadium has become ONGC Shivaji Stadium, and Vishwavidyalay has become Honda Two Wheelers Vishwavidyalay.

Kolkata Metro Rail is now planning to launch the tendering process in order to implement it from the coming year. Apparently, Mumbai and Delhi Metro are also looking to broadbase this advertising strategy.

As such, the current advertising model is not yielding optimal results. Hence, the Metro corporations are looking at more innovative concepts to increase the non-fare revenues. Also, apart from increasing the number of traditional media formats inside the metro stations there will be an increased number of kiosks and other services like food stalls and ATMs in coming times.