Meet the new ‘Bijness Bhai’ in town

GoDaddy Inc., reportedly the world’s largest cloud platform dedicated to small and independent ventures, has launched its new integrated marketing campaign focused on educating small businesses in India on the value of creating an online presence for their venture. The aim is to help people understand the ease and affordability of building a website with the robust ecosystem that GoDaddy offers, to manage and grow their businesses. Starting with TVC, the company plans to fully launch the campaign, rolling it out across radio, print and outdoor channels by the coming month.

For the campaign, GoDaddy has partnered with former captain of the Indian cricket team, MS Dhoni, portraying him as a mentor and guide — the “Bijness Bhai” (business mentor), the foremost authority on business for small business owners, entrepreneurs and individuals across the country. GoDaddy and Dhoni will work together towards encouraging people to turn their ideas into reality online. The marketing campaign will be available in seven Indian languages, including Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu, to help spread the message to people across the country.

“I understand from personal experience how hard it can be to turn one’s passion into a business. The key to achieving it successfully is by staying focused and committed to your vision, while building a close connection with your audience. GoDaddy understands the importance of community by making it easy to get any idea online and discovered,” said Arun Pandey, cricketer-turned-entrepreneur, Dhoni’s friend, manager and business partner. “I am super excited about my venture with Dhoni and GoDaddy is helping us advance our dreams and make them bigger and real.”

For its latest marketing campaign, GoDaddy worked with Lowe Lintas to conceptualize and create two quirky and humorous television commercials (TVCs) with Dhoni as the “Bijness Bhai”, a messiah for entrepreneurs, makers and independent do-ers, helping them with day-to-day problems and advising them to grow their business by going online, using GoDaddy’s differentiated online and productivity tools and solutions.

Commenting on the campaign and collaboration with Dhoni, Nikhil Arora, Managing Director and Vice President, GoDaddy India said, “We are thrilled to be working with a global phenomenon like Dhoni and share our combined story. He represents the true voice of India with a successful professional journey, as a cricketer and now as an entrepreneur. Coming from a small town in the country, Dhoni has worked hard to gain prominence and achieve success by following his passion and doing what he believes in. We hope that his story can inspire and encourage business owners, especially in Tier 2, Tier 3 cities of the country to follow their dream and get their ideas online.” He further added, “At GoDaddy, we are strongly focused on supporting small and independent businesses, by helping them come online, grow and thrive their ventures. Through this campaign and our association with Dhoni, we want to create awareness about the benefits of going online, while demonstrating the power of our integrated suite of products and services to help emerging India transform digitally.”