Kohli scores high in millennial fan following

Mumbai: Virat Kohli has a very strong image among the millennials. This is the observation by Ajay Lakhotia, founder & CEO, StockGro, which has signed up as the official sponsor of Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB).

StockGro, a social and gaming investment platform, is the official sponsor of the T20 paragon - Royal Challengers, Bangalore. The brand sponsorship deal will run through the entirety of Season 2022 where StockGro will connect with Indian cricket lovers and improve the brand

recall among them.

In addition to frequent advertisements on the Hotstar app, StockGro will deepen its sponsorship with the help of brand collateral where the organization will distribute company merchandise like miniature bats and replica jerseys. All these merchandises will be signed by the RCB players.

Talking to Bizz Buzz, Lakhotia says: "What we were thinking of doing initially was to reach out to our target audience beyond our digital marketing campaign, especially whatever we see on social media. That's where RCB reached out to us saying, heyguys, we have heard about what you are doing, you are mostly targeting millennials and IPL is something which is generally watched by millennials."

People are very excited about cricket. In fact, their whole version was that either people love to talk about cricket or they love to talk about stocks. And that's what we are trying to build. Interestingly, RCB is kind of a youth icon. The brand image that they have created is for millennials. Virat Kohli has a very strong image among the millennials, he said.

StockGro will also play host to the StockGro Premier League which will include a giveaway of RCB x StockGro merchandise and a grand prize of invite-only access pass for the final screening at UB City, Bangalore for the winners.

Replying to a query, Lakhotia said: "We were thinking less about how RCB would perform in IPL.We were thinking more about RCB's brand positioning resonating to what we are doing right now. And that's why we said this makes sense if we partner with RCB, both of us are basically sending out message to the same target audience, generally the millennials in an age group of 18 to 30."

And what we are trying to do is we are trying to transform the behavior out there. We are trying to help people learn how to trade and invest. And what better way of reaching out to them than going through our partnership with RCB. They take a notice of what we are doing and that's exactly how our partnership happens, he added.

Talking about the brand perspectives, he said that one, we are going to reach out to audience during the matches saying in the match and in our social messaging, we will tell them how just the way matches go up and down, markets also go up and down. But you need to have that level

of persistency, that level of consistency and training, the way the players have to train themselves to participate in the match, which is kind of a competition.

Similarly, people who want to participate in market can't just go out and start investing without having the primary knowledge of how market works, how investments work.

Okay, so that's the messaging we are giving out saying just the way cricketers work so hard in learning and training themselves. We have created a training ground for the users we have made a training ground for the millennials for them to own their skills of investment without losing money.

That's the message which is going out with the RCB, he said.

StockGro's investments across all the media expenses, which would be Ad which include RCB sponsorship deal, everything that goes in newspapers it would have cross around Rs 10 crore.

RCB is kind of a youth icon. The brand image that they have created is for millennials. Virat Kohli has a very strong image among the millennials

-Ajay Lakhotia,

founder & CEO, StockGro