FirstCry.com’s venture ties up with Big B

FirstCry.com, Asia’s largest baby and kids store, has today announced that Amitabh Bachchan will be the face of the brand. Having started operations in late 2010, Firstcry.com is already the leading baby and kids player with its online, mobile and 125+ offline store presence.

With the campaign, the brand aims to accelerate the growth and take the brand to a much larger parent base. The company’s main focus has been to enhance and simplify the buying of baby products for parents. Today, with an omni-channel presence, FirstCry is successfully offering customers a central converged ecosystem.

The campaign, which has been conceptualized by Lowe Lintas Mumbai, works on the insight that parents feel great about having worked hard for their children, including shopping. The category is a high involvement category and FirstCry.com makes sure that parents have the best choices available both in types of products as well as numbers of products.

On the one hand it means that parents are assured of finding the right product on Firstcry.com, but at the same time it makes ‘choosing one, not so easy’. A specialist in the baby and kids space with an inventory of over 90,000 products and over 1200 International and National brands on board, FirstCry.com recently raised a funding of $36 million Series D round led by Hedge Fund Valiant Capital Partners and Venture Capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA).

In the last few years, the brand has grown to become one of the top niche ecommerce players and has predominantly expanded its base to provide the best quality and variety to Indian parents. Speaking about the ad campaign launch by FirstCry, Supam Maheshwari, CEO and Founder, FirstCry.com says, Our business landscape is rapidly expanding and our growth rates have been exponential – in this environment we need our brand to also evolve at the same pace.

Thus we felt the need to have a more strategic approach to be able to address a wider variety of consumers and markets. This campaign will have a significant impact not only on the online customer base but also on the customer walk in at franchise stores and even new franchisee inquiries.Currently we have over 125 stores and will achieve the target of 200 stores by March 2016. Looking at the growth plans we target to open 400 stores by March 2017.

We are also expecting a 300 per cent increase in traffic. Explaining the rationale behind the brand campaign, Anuj Jain, Senior Vice President, Marketing Firstcry.com, says, “FirstCry.com is a brand that opens up a world of possibilities beyond what Indian parents currently know, see and experience when it comes to baby and kids products. When it comes to indulging grandchildren, grandparents are miles ahead of anyone else.

The need for this indulgence coupled with access to endless variety on FirstCry.com, mean Amitab Bachchan keeps Firstcry.com, the ‘big store for little ones’, always handy on his mobile.” The campaign has a series of films which will have Amitab Bachchan in a never seen before avatar.

The child-like fun that he had while shooting the films reflects in some of the most endearing grandfather-granddaughter moments. He is a perfect fit for the brand because he is known to be a doting grandfather, he has been a trendsetter in adopting social media and technology and, last but not the least, he brings credibility that comes with his stature.