From its humble beginnings in 2002, the Delhi Metro has come a long way in 2016 and is looking for greater avenues and opportunities towards increasing revenues through outdoor advertisements. This was stated by Sharat Sharma, Director (Operations), Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC). Sharma shared data on the success of the DMRC, which recorded a turnover of Rs 370 crore last year. Currently, it has 160 stations in Delhi & NCR and a network as long as 350 kms. It carries an average of 94 crore passengers per annum and the trains run at the frequency of 2.18 minutes.

"The typical metro user is male, belongs to the service class, uses smart phone and in the age group of 20-30 years,” shared Sharma. This data on extensive use of metro as well as their socio-economic composition has led the DMRC to take fresh steps towards encouraging outdoor advertising on its network. Sharma said that in 2014, the DMRC took measures like exclusive advertising rights, consolidating tenders, e-tendering, promoting goodwill, uniform tender condition, policy for licencing and introducing realistic reserve price to promote advertising on its network. Further, semi-naming rights, branding of stations, train wrapping and other such measures were adopted to make the network feasible for advertising. "Of the 80% revenue increase Delhi Metro had, 30% has come from advertising of which outdoor advertising takes a big share,” said Sharma, adding that the network had great opportunities in outdoor advertising like on billboards, staircase, tokens and walls.