Busy Metro stations to be branded soon

In a first of its kind move for DMRC – Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, naming and branding rights for 3 of its busiest Metro stations – City Centre and Sector 18 in Noida along with MG Road in Gurgaon – have been granted to Wave Infratech, a Noida-based realty firm,.

In June 2014, the vibrant DMRC had introduced the concept of renaming metro stations for a stipulated fee, as an integral part of its plans to generate additional revenue. The licensees will be granted exclusive semi-naming rights for the metro stations. The bid winners will also be permitted to suffix the name of their brand to the station’s name.

In addition to it, the licensee can avail a massive 500 sq m of advertising space at these metro stations in order to advertise their brand, apart from the opportunity to conduct a plethora of other branding activities. In another unique move, the licensee will also be able to choose the scheme of colours inside the metro station in a bid to match its company logo. In this manner, the local identity of a metro station will remain intact, while the licensee can effectively popularize their brand. The naming rights for the metro stations come with highly lucrative exclusive marketing rights of the immensely crucial and eye catching media space for a staggering 10 years.

The 6 other metro stations which are still available for rebranding and semi-renaming – are Golf Course, HUDA City Centre, Botanical Garden, IFFCO Chowk, Vaishali and Guru Dronacharya. These stations are also available for semi-renaming for the next 10 years.

Plans are underway to extend metro stations in the city of Faridabad under the unique project as well. A major chunk of the stations on offer are on the Yellow and Blue lines. Thus far, DMRC has named its metro stations based on their locations. But recently, Gurgaon’s state of the art Rapid Metro is the only service which allows rebranding of its metro stations, with 3 stations leased out to different firms like IndusInd bank, Vodafone and Micromax.

As per the all important DMRC, Wave Infratech has already been issued an acceptance letter for the 3 stations.

Globally, Metro stations being named after firms or brands instead of their location, is a common phenomenon, as transport company officials aim to rake in revenue via advertising The bidding auction of metro station’s naming rights is an excellent revenue generating stream for DMRC, that will help in timely completion of its highly anticipated Phase III project, apart from the other miscellaneous and maintenance expenses.

DMRCs counterpart NMRC – Noida Metro Rail Company is expected to follow suit soon by auctioning metro stations for rebranding along its proposed and world class 28 km Noida-Greater Noida route. Once NMRC works out the minutest of details like which and how many stations will be auctioned etc, bidding tenders will be floated. So all the people who use metro trains daily for commuting get ready for a dose of marketing messages being thrown your way.