Gautam Bhirani: Connecting People & Places With Indias Most Trending Youth-Centric Dooh Network
Gautam Bhirani
CEO
"Gautam is leveraging his deep under standing of the ooh landscape and changing consumer behaviour to build disruptive digital ecosystems & make connections in a visually cluttered digital world."
Apart from being a business leader, Gautam is also a strategic advisor to organizations from India, Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. He has also been actively involved in contractual consulting and has been a trusted counsel for emerging media startups in the country.
Let’s hear it from Gautam as he talks about his innovative ideas, entrepreneurial experiences, and more.
Life is said to be the sum of all your choices. Gautam Bhirani, CEO, TAGTALK made a career choice of becoming an entrepreneur and creating a connection between people & places in a visually cluttered digital world. He is popularly known as a DOOH(Digital Out of Home) specialist who, from a very young age has worked in all facets of the Media & Advertising industry and as a leader & innovator has established a strong presence in the same. Built on mobile DNA & connected in realtime, Gautam's TAGTALK is one of India's largest integrated DOOH media companies today providing consumer engagement platforms to urban ecosystems optimizing Ad Campaigns with location, cluster, day, and time reaching millions of millennials and Gen-Z daily.
Apart from being a business leader, Gautam is also a strategic advisor to organizations from India, Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. He has also been actively involved in contractual consulting and has been a trusted counsel for emerging media startups in the country.
Let’s hear it from Gautam as he talks about his innovative ideas, entrepreneurial experiences, and more.
Define TAGTALK's role in the advertising services domain.
TAGTALK is India's largest youth-centric digital out of home network which offers platforms for brands to reach the youth beyond their mobile phones. The whole idea behind establishing TAGTALK was to create a new screen experience and engage millions of urban millennials and GenZ at places they love and spend most of their time out of home. Our mobile driven platform automates communication and enables the push of real time POS offers, personalized greetings, digital menus, gigs, event announcements, live location based Meta Business & Photo sharing with Instagram. Today, we are one of the market leaders in India and have been working with reputed brands like Vivo, Samsung, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Diageo etc. Our efforts have been appreciated In the international market as well and this year we are also working towards launching our network in the Middle East market.
Describe yourself as a leader. What is your success mantra?
I strongly believe that trends and technology change every five to 10 years and what is working now may not work in the near future, which keeps me ready to learn and educate myself and study behavioural trends. To become a successful entrepreneur it is very important to learn, unlearn and relearn. I have always tried to build self sustainable businesses and platforms considering the changes that might evolve in the next decade which has given me a competitive edge over others in the market.
As a leader, I believe my success depends on three aspects innovation,implementation, and the contribution of a strong, close-knit team directed toward a common goal. Besides, I am extremely passionate about innovation and come from the generation which saw the technological shift I believe that helped me to distinguish among the innovations that were disruptive enough to get a lot of traction in the market.
In your opinion, how has Covid helped in creating opportunities for your venture? How have you been guiding the company to leverage technology to stay afloat among its competitors in the market?
Pre-Covid there was a boom in digital out ofhome space with tech giants like Google entering this
Define TAGTALK's role in the advertising services domain.
TAGTALK is India's largest youth-centric digital out of home network which offers platforms for brands to reach the youth beyond their mobile phones. The whole idea behind establishing TAGTALK was to create a new screen experience and engage millions of urban millennials and GenZ at places they love and spend most of their time out of home. Our mobile driven platform automates communication and enables the push of real time POS offers, personalized greetings, digital menus, gigs, event announcements, live location based Meta Business & Photo sharing with Instagram. Today, we are one of the market leaders in India and have been working with reputed brands like Vivo, Samsung, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Diageo etc. Our efforts have been appreciated In the international market as well and this year we are also working towards launching our network in the Middle East market.
The whole idea behind establishing TAGTALK was to create a new screen experience and engage millions of urban millennials and GenZ at places they love and spend most of their time out of home
Describe yourself as a leader. What is your success mantra?
I strongly believe that trends and technology change every five to 10 years and what is working now may not work in the near future, which keeps me ready to learn and educate myself and study behavioural trends. To become a successful entrepreneur it is very important to learn, unlearn and relearn. I have always tried to build self sustainable businesses and platforms considering the changes that might evolve in the next decade which has given me a competitive edge over others in the market.
As a leader, I believe my success depends on three aspects innovation,implementation, and the contribution of a strong, close-knit team directed toward a common goal. Besides, I am extremely passionate about innovation and come from the generation which saw the technological shift I believe that helped me to distinguish among the innovations that were disruptive enough to get a lot of traction in the market.
In your opinion, how has Covid helped in creating opportunities for your venture? How have you been guiding the company to leverage technology to stay afloat among its competitors in the market?
Pre-Covid there was a boom in digital out ofhome space with tech giants like Google entering this
domain with programmatic advertising and Covid obviously when it came halted progress for everyone including us. But what Covid also did was bring digital transformation enabling adoption of new technologies across various locations like restaurants, hotels, offices, gyms, clubs, and cafes to connect with their customers digitally. The entire landscape changed and a lot of digital inventory came into existence. At that point in time, we witnessed huge opportunities to innovate and create new digital channels. During Covid I was consulting to The Government of India on use of new media and technologies that can help connect with public in pandemics.
Through our networks we were able to display safety guidelines, Live updates using Twitter from Ministry or Health and location based hospital information which came in handy for both public and establishments where our network was present. This was also the time when Diageo Global came up with a 100 million dollar fund to transform the dining industry with new technologies and through our partnership with them in India, TAGTALK was digitized almost 1500 top locations in India, which are all a category from Five star Hotels to best of bars and cafes. Therefore, I believe it is very important for every leader to keep up to date and forecast the upcoming trend within the industry. And for that, I read a lot, build networks, travel around the world, interact with a lot of people and also prepare my team for the upcoming trends in the future.
What is the future roadmap you have envisioned for the company?
In 2023, we have already expanded our network from Restaurants, Cafes, and Hotels to Premium Gyms, Colleges, and more. This year TAGTALK is coming up with an initiative where we are looking to support businesses with our technology and bring them onto our platform. We are set to connect thousands of digital screens powered by TAGTALK automating sales & communication for businesses and at the same time enabling them to generate more revenue through third party advertising using our AdTech platform.
Gautam Bhirani, CEO, TAGTALK
•Hobbies: Travel, Calisthenics, Playing Piano
•Favorite Book: Art of War
•Favorite Cuisine: Thai
•Favorite Travel Destination: Istanbul
•Awards & Recognition: Winner of 40 under 40 for Exchange 4Media Awards, Recognized as the Most Influential Leader in the OOH industry,Winner of the Youth Icon Award 2018, Winner of the Indian Achievers Award 2020-2021, Impact Digital 100 '2021
Through our networks we were able to display safety guidelines, Live updates using Twitter from Ministry or Health and location based hospital information which came in handy for both public and establishments where our network was present. This was also the time when Diageo Global came up with a 100 million dollar fund to transform the dining industry with new technologies and through our partnership with them in India, TAGTALK was digitized almost 1500 top locations in India, which are all a category from Five star Hotels to best of bars and cafes. Therefore, I believe it is very important for every leader to keep up to date and forecast the upcoming trend within the industry. And for that, I read a lot, build networks, travel around the world, interact with a lot of people and also prepare my team for the upcoming trends in the future.
What is the future roadmap you have envisioned for the company?
In 2023, we have already expanded our network from Restaurants, Cafes, and Hotels to Premium Gyms, Colleges, and more. This year TAGTALK is coming up with an initiative where we are looking to support businesses with our technology and bring them onto our platform. We are set to connect thousands of digital screens powered by TAGTALK automating sales & communication for businesses and at the same time enabling them to generate more revenue through third party advertising using our AdTech platform.
Gautam Bhirani, CEO, TAGTALK
•Hobbies: Travel, Calisthenics, Playing Piano
•Favorite Book: Art of War
•Favorite Cuisine: Thai
•Favorite Travel Destination: Istanbul
•Awards & Recognition: Winner of 40 under 40 for Exchange 4Media Awards, Recognized as the Most Influential Leader in the OOH industry,Winner of the Youth Icon Award 2018, Winner of the Indian Achievers Award 2020-2021, Impact Digital 100 '2021