A very interesting marketing campaign was rolled out by HDFC Securities just before the onset of the Diwali festive season by Puneeth Bekal, EVP & CMO of HDFC Securities and his team, and Pavan R Chawla and Hitaishi Somaiya caught up with him a deep dive on the launch of HDFC SKY — the all-in-one investment app positioned on research-driven insights, transparent flat brokerage, and a comprehensive platform that highlights the company’s commitment to democratize wealth creation by making investing more responsible, guided, smarter, simpler, and inclusive for India’s next generation of investors. Puneeth tells about other key HDFC Securities offerings and initiatives too, such as InvestRight, HDFC True, Sky Learn, Sky Baskets, the CSR-led HDFC Know Your Money program, and the Nudge Engine. And, among other things, about the campaign strategy and specifics.
A very interesting marketing campaign was rolled out by HDFC Securities just before the onset of the Diwali festive season byWe hope you find his insights rewarding.
HDFC Securities plans to run four campaigns — one began on the 29th of September, and the next one begins on 7th October. Walk us through them all, starting with HDFC SKY. But first, it might be best to check out the first campaign, on HDFC SKY.
It’s a sharp and quick film with a young Millennial, helped by others. And very quickly shares the HDFC SKY proposition too. So what are the four campaigns you’re running?
There are four brands, four campaigns that we are running in the coming months. The first campaign is for HDFC SKY. HDFC SKY is a DIY app. It’s a DIY investment app for every and any kind of end user. Not just an F&O trader, but also an investor who is just starting to invest.
And what is HDFC SKY’s key proposition?
The key proposition we are talking about in the campaign is that if you look at today’s situation when it comes to investments, it’s a dinner-table conversation now. The first question you ask anyone is, “Where do I invest?”. No one knows where to invest, and everyone is asking each other where to invest. The unfortunate part is, the people you are asking are not experts. You might ask your friend, your uncle, your dad, a paanwala, whoever — they are not experts.
What we have as a plus in the category is a research team. We have a power-packed research team, bucketed into three parts. One is a retail research team, then there is an institutional research team — these are the guys who guide big companies and corporates on where to invest their money.
Then you have the HDFC True Research team. These are the guys who are wealth advisors for the top 30,000 families in India.
The combination of all this research put together is what you get on the app, for free. That is the plus one. I think we are in the best position today in the Indian market to guide our customers to invest responsibly.
So even the youngest users, when their mom or dad tells them to start saving, can get guidance here?
Exactly. That’s our primary call. Even the youngest ones are told — “Do you have insurance? Yes. Now start saving as part of your family responsibilities. Where do I save it? Maybe this is good.”. For them, the search and advice they get from our research team is fantastic. It’s a big game-changer for them. They say, ‘I’ll go here, it’s HDFC.’ Everything — from the lineage to 25 years of doing this — fantastic.
If I’m a new end-user, I download HDFC SKY, and I have not invested anything yet — do I still have access to this research? Or do I need to be a registered user who has invested something?
You do need to be a registered user, of course, but you don’t need to have already invested. Even if you just put a tiny amount, it doesn’t matter. Please ask all these questions — because these are exactly what’s already in people’s minds. This is why HDFC SKY research is launching, and that’s the difference.
What are you trying to change in terms of perception with this app?
If you look at the HDFC Securities Open app, you’ll understand how we are changing everything. There’s a perception about HDFC when it comes to tech — that we are regressive, not as good as others.
I wanted to change that.
Our logos are also very different. The HDFC SKY logo looks like a new tech platform.
Even the UX/UI is very modern. It is for a DIY app, predominantly for younger audiences, but honestly, anyone can use it.
There is the research tab. When I click on it, it tells me which stocks I should be investing in, based on the profile it has of me. I’ve given my inputs, and this is a live call. This is for everyone.
If you’re an intraday trader who wants to buy today and sell today, it shows stocks to invest in.
If you’re a short-term trader with 3 months to invest, it shows you those stocks. It even tells you the date you should enter and the date you should exit. It is that granular. You don’t have to think or overthink. That’s how detailed this app is. This is what we did for Navratri. For nine days, we had nine different ideas.
What about advice for F&O traders?
Yes, we give them F&O strategies. We even have a live F&O session on the app itself. Today is Thursday — there might be a live F&O on the app today. We have Yogesh Nanda — he’s live during market hours, guiding F&O traders on what should be their strategy.
How did you approach the HDFC SKY campaign?
One thing I’m very clear about is that the age-old way of advertising legacy companies is over. I’ll give you an example outside HDFC. Look at Mahindra and Tata — how they pivoted and changed perception in consumers’ minds. They picked one future-forward product, EVs. The moment you think about Tata and Mahindra, the first thing that comes to mind is EV products. That perception shift has changed how we see them — future-forward, great designs, and so on. I think SKY is that perception change for HDFC Securities. And as I said, even the logo is space-age.
The SKY ad seems to be breaking perceptions. Share more about the themes?
The product window is changing. Here, the idea was again to break this perception — that whether you buy 50 shares or 5,000 shares, the brokerage is just 20 rupees.
Similarly, we have another ad talking about True Research.
Then another one about all the content you get on the app.
And the fourth one talks about mutual funds.
There are 4,400 mutual funds in India. Everyone says SIP karo, mutual funds are good — but no one knows which (particular) ones. That is what the ad is for.
The moment you lead with this logo and the completeness of the critical value, visibility for the end user of SKY, it’s like “SKY is the limit,” and it’s like what it’s giving you is a VIP kind of solution — very individualistic. Hyper-personalization, depending on your preferences, your slider of risk, your previous purchases.
OK, the ads. Tell us about the order of their scheduling.
The first ad, like I said, speaks about the brokerage piece. Whether it’s 50 rupees or 5,000 rupees, you only pay 20 rupees flat brokerage. There are no hidden costs. While there is government tax, cess, which we can’t control, from our end we’ll only charge 20 rupees. That is one.
The second ad in the SKY campaign talks about the research piece I mentioned — an entire team at the back end. The ad shows it almost like people inside the app, working for you.
The third ad talks about the intelligence the app gives — reports on companies, industry heatmaps, etc. Our biggest and most popular IP among consumers is “Pick of the Week”. Every week we come up with one stock for everyone to think about investing. That’s our guidance, we feel you should invest here.
And the fourth one talks about which mutual fund is right for you. Everyone says it, but this is clarity. Those are the four ads we’re doing.
You also mentioned talking to others about credibility and trust.
Yes. If someone says something nice about, say, how this kind of service from a credible, trusted entity helps, we’ll plug it in. We have 8–10.5 million Instagram followers. Even the Awaaz guy has been on my episodes so many times.
You’ve built an internal Nudge Engine too…
Yes. We have created an internal Nudge Engine at the backend. The Nudge Engine has around 60 to 70 cohorts depending on the profile of that person, and also what you feed in when you enter the app — your income, age, appetite, etc.
The first 14 days of onboarding, we basically prime you with everything. I’ll send you research reports first. Then I’ll send you — these are the stocks you should start with. Then a mutual fund. Then F&O, depending on your engagement with the content.
If you’re an F&O trader and click on that, you’ll get specific nudges for F&O. If you’re investing through mutual funds, then I’ll recommend SKY Baskets — combinations of 4–5 stocks curated by our research team. Once you buy a SKY Basket, the rebalancing is done by our team, not you. If you get into stocks, then we say, “Why use only your own money?” We give you MTF (Margin Trading Facility). MTF provides you a loan at 1% per month to invest. Suppose you have ₹10,000, I’ll give you ₹40,000 more. You can invest ₹50,000 while paying just 1% on the ₹40,000.
What about people who enter without experience? There are people who have had very little experience. A friend who was an EVP at a broadcasting company seven years ago, and obviously not a newbie, said the mistake he made was getting straight into intraday trading. Then he learned it’s better to go slow, take a bit of the mutual fund route first. For three years he struggled, but today is a happy intraday trader. And for his trading, he is guided in a big way by special algorithms-based proprietary platform his partner created for him. How about HDFC SKY?
There are inputs that it receives from various places. It’s not only dependent on the machine. There is a significant amount of human insight that comes into play.
We’ve got an entire full-stack research team. In the retail research team, there are people who only look into chemicals, some only into auto, others into energy. They’ll connect it across categories.
The algo deals on numbers and the prediction of numbers, with millions of input variables coming from various industries. Here, there is clear human expertise coming in along with machine learning, combined to tell you exactly what to do.
It’s not only algo.
And how do new investors, completely raw, learn? Is there something like the books series there was, years ago – The Complete Idiot’s Guide to whatever?
For someone completely green, we have a thing called SKY Learn in the app. It has 210 videos that give you the entire A-to-Z of investing. It’s on the website as well as the app.
How about outreach beyond the app, to promote awareness and use?
Yes. We went to Mumbai University. We started campus engagement. Every time we go to a campus, we take one of our researchers. Most of my team members are social influencers. They understand the markets and are also entertainers.
We go with two — one researcher and one influencer from my team. Last time we went to SRCC. We had a stand-up comedy skit, talking about all aspects of investing, built into the act and tagged by the researcher. The idea is not to take them through a boring presentation or preach to them. The idea is to engage and entertain them so their interest increases.
And from a CSR perspective?
From the CSR perspective, we have an app called HDFC Know Your Money. This CSR program goes to all the hinterlands of India.
We have tied up with 2,500 digital sakhis who go house to house educating families on how to save and then invest. The HDFC Know Your Money app gives them guided education on saving. Once done, they move into the same app to start mutual fund investments. We don’t push stocks there, because that requires more knowledge.
In certain districts in Maharashtra, we have tied up with district CEOs who have integrated our curriculum about investments into the 9th and 10th grade curriculum. We’re scaling to other states.
And as part of CSR, we’re also building a fraud awareness campaign — to tell consumers in metro cities how not to fall for scams, especially investment scams.
How are you marketing these campaigns? What’s the media mix like?
For SKY, it’s predominantly digital with a little bit of TV.
For Invest Right, which is our second campaign — it’s also an app like SKY but with a relationship manager mapped to you — we are using TV for reach awareness. Here the age group is 30+.
If you look at ARPUs, they’re higher than SKY. These are working professionals, businessmen, who have enough money to invest, are aware of the workings, and also need assistance. They want to be able to pick up the phone and say, ‘Boss, what should I do with this stock? Tell me what I should invest in. I’m feeling restless — what is your researcher saying?’
So a relationship manager is mapped to them. That’s InvestRight.
And the third campaign, which is only TV, is HDFC True. This is for the top 30,000 families in India. It’s a wealth advisory service, not an app.
All audience tiers are mapped…
Yes. So the cycle is complete. A person sees SKY and thinks, ‘This is DIY — not only for early traders, but also F&O traders. Then there is IR (Invest Right), which gives assistance with a relationship manager. And if one day I become part of the top 30,000 families, then I also have HDFC True’. So the entire cycle is there.
And what were the campaign development timelines? How long was it between the need for the campaigns and the final films and plan?
Around one and a half to two years. SKY was launched even before I joined, but there wasn’t much marketing. We were building the app. How could you launch without being happy with what you were doing?
In India, this is not a new concept. So after I came in, I put a stop on marketing spend. When I was asked why the marketing spend was lesser than the previous year, I said ‘let’s get the app ready, and once we are ready, we’ll launch’. We didn’t completely stop. We were building the brand in other ways — social platforms, etcetera.
We were only marketing to in-market audiences; people searching for de-mat accounts.
Even now, we market only in spaces where our immediate competitors are. I’d rather reach out to fence-sitters and convert them.
Your next audience is Gen Z. How are you planning to build a relationship with them?
SKY is for Gen Zs and Millennials basically. It’s going to be digital marketing and brand marketing.
What do Gen Zs today actually value? They value authenticity. This generation can break through fluff. They see through it. Every proposition I showed you today has authenticity. For example, the ad where you see the girl in the café — the reason we built it was to show there’s no hidden pricing. Whether you buy one lakh shares or just two shares, we only charge 20 rupees.
Authenticity in every communication is what I want to build. We need to be extremely transparent. We need to showcase our demonstrated capabilities and expertise. We need to be authentic. Trust only comes when every marker at every engagement makes one feel, ‘I can trust these guys’.
Do you use influencers to connect with younger audiences?
No, we don’t use influencers to promote anything. We don’t pay them. If someone promotes us, it’s purely organic.
The way we leverage (duly qualified and approved) influencers is different: ‘If you want to work with us, you interview my researcher. What he speaks is more valuable than what you say’. So I leverage the reach of the influencer, but the content is that of my expert. When the consumer sees it, he sees trusted, authentic content.
And of course everything goes to the regulator first…
Absolutely. And of course only when it is signed off do we put it on platforms. We are extremely compliant.
Some competitors have been accused of showing incorrect stock numbers, or just averaging them. How precise is HDFC SKY?
I don’t think there are any issues with us. Most of our traders on SKY use the web platform, not mobile. If this is my profession day in and day out, I need a larger screen. Our web platform’s performance is excellent. The latency is 0.09 or something like that. That latency is negligible.
How do you keep customers engaged after on-boarding?
For Invest Right, we do weekly webinars for our customers with our research team. Usually on Sunday mornings.
Customers can ask questions — about their portfolios, market views, recommendations.
On SKY too we have webinars, but they’re more ‘how-to’ sessions — like how to use MTF, how to become an F&O trader. We bring experts to guide them. So both platforms have webinars, but tailored to their audiences.
F&O is seen as risky. How do you build trust there?
F&O is a different segment altogether. Majority of F&O traders lose money because they don’t know what they’re doing. On Tuesdays and Thursdays — expiry days — we have a webinar during live market sessions with Yogesh Nanda, one of the most successful F&O traders. He doesn’t suggest trades — he gives strategies. Option strategies, pull strategies. Customers decide what to use. He can’t recommend specifically, but he shows approaches. Every webinar and call is recorded, even for Invest Right. They’re put on YouTube.
So everything we do is transparent, compliant, and regulator-approved.
The beauty of your entire approach is that each category of user, once they grow in ability to save more and invest more, can move across your three tiered offerings. Like when a SKY user grows and needs more advanced services, he has options within the HDFC Securities ecosystem.
Yes. If I’m a SKY user at 25, and then by 30 I become a big founder with 200 crores, then I’ll move to True. SKY won’t make sense for me. If I still want assistance every now and then, I’ll move to Invest Right.
One must remember, that the movement from SKY to Invest Right is as per the regulator; not as easy as number portability in telecom. You can shift, but operationally it’s cumbersome. SKY has a feature where if you have a stock in Zerodha, you can move your stocks into SKY, so you see everything in one place.
And if someone doesn’t have that option, but wants to move the actual stock values from another app to, say, SKY…”
To move the actual stock values, you need to go through the CDSL process, which is on the app.
For HDFC True, what’s your TV media mix?
HDFC True is for HNIs, so we’re using TV for reach and awareness. We are doing CNBC TV18 Prime only. The reason is Prime gives a complete view of global and Indian markets, and how they connect. CXOs look at markets 24×7, not just India. That involvement made Prime a better fit.
Which agencies are you working with?
The SKY campaign is done by Steve Priya. I worked with them in my Godrej Good Night days. They’re understated but excellent. Invest Right is also by them. The CSR campaign is directed by Nitesh Tiwari.
Lovely. Walk us through your creative process, please.
For SKY, we went through 30 to 35 scripts across agencies. The clear objective was: Pointed communication with a new-age vibe.
For InvestRight, we wanted humor and relatability for the 30+ audience.
One of the films is set around a pickle bottle, mixing humor with finance.
For CSR, I was clear I didn’t want preachy campaigns. We’ve built it like a drama series, with hand-picked actors. Nitesh Tiwari has directed it brilliantly — it feels like a TV series trailer. The teaser is 40 seconds, and each film is 35–40 seconds.
And what about the rollout timelines after the first, SKY campaign that rolled out on September 29th
October 7th will open InvestRight. And October 11th is for CSR. Post October 11th, all three will run together.
We wanted to roll out before Diwali because during Diwali there’s a trading mood.
Since media monies are limited, we wanted to build mother-brand saliency first and then branch it into individual products.
Diwali and the World Cup period give us high reach at efficient costs.
Thanks Puneeth. Obviously, the year-and-a-half you spent planning for SKY and InvestRight and HDFC True were truly well spent. And I’m sure our readers will benefit from the strategic insights you’ve shared. Your campaign and its rollout reaching a crescendo in the thick of the Diwali season is great timing too, so best wishes, and one hopes the ‘Sky’ isn’t the limit.
Thank you.
(Also read this story for more information about HDFC SKY)
