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Indrani Dutta

KOLKATA, Feb. 25

CESC, the first company to have distributed electricity in India on a utility basis, 100 years ago, is planning to diversify — not into an associated line of business but into a radically new area such as event management.

Matters are still in a nascent stage, but there is a clear possibility of the project seeing the light of the day if a group of `electricians'-turned-sophisticated space-sellers have their way.

Things began in a small way last April, when the CESC top brass was trying hard to find a way to boost the company's income without any fresh investment. This is precisely when the business development cell of the RPG-flagship had come out with the idea of selling bill-space. ``CESC had to redesign its bills and position the ad space in such a manner that it was not missed,'' said a source.

Since then there has been no looking back, and as companies queue up before the utility — not to get electricity connections, but to use this new publicity medium — the moolah has started flowing in.

Available information revealed that not only had the power utility already generated Rs 1.5 crore from this revenue-source this fiscal, space on this score was fully booked till 2003!

National Insurance was the first advertiser and now LIC, Sony, Godrej Appliances and the Balsara group have all used this medium and some are wanting repeats.

``Such is this new medium's reach that the print media, which must be losing sleep over CESC's doings, is also using the medium to reach out to the people,'' said a source.

Hindustan Times and Times of India have already used it as a promotion medium while the city's leading daily, Ananda Bazar Patrika, is planning to run a campaign in May.

Having joined the fray, CESC wants to leave no stone unturned. It has prepared a `Power Point' presentation quoting figures from reputed survey agencies to tell its potential clients that Kolkata was the third biggest market for quite a few consumer goods such as fridges, cameras and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) such as soap and toothpaste.

Employing hardsell tactics, the clients are being told that, while the city was a large market in some areas, advertising would boost their presence in spheres such as financial products.

For example, the city lags behind in areas such as taking out insurance policies and investing in savings instruments.

Little surprise then, that the insurance companies have used the medium aggressively, segmenting their products in a such a way that a different policy is promoted to each class.

CESC has split its consumers into three groups — platinum, gold and silver — the categorisation being done on the basis of usage.

``This is where CESC's huge data base of 17.65 lakh consumers, within its licence area of Kolkata and Howrah, has come in as a potent tool since through the pattern of power consumption, the company can gauge the standard of living and predict the consumer profile.''

It could also tell its advertisers where to advertise or how to plan an event or a launch, since CESC had three distinct consumer categories — domestic, commercial and industrial.

Companies such as Colgate-Palmolive are now planning product launches even as others have used this medium to send out mailers and covers with sachets of shampoo, fairness cream and detergents, making the bill something to look forward to instead of being the usual missive forcing people to make a payout.

Emboldened by its initial success in advertising through its bills, and given a cash-crunch, which is making the company fight for survival, CESC is planning to develop this line of activity further — such as utilising the space available on its 1.1 lakh poles, 5,000 transformers and 36 cash offices.

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