PhonePe is marking its 10th anniversary with a film that tries to answer a simple question: how do you show the scale of 70 crore users without simply putting ‘70 crore’ on a screen?
Its answer is speed.
The film features Shahu Supreme, who holds an Indian record for speaking 494 words per minute, attempting to call out PhonePe users by name at his maximum pace.
Even then, naming all 70 crore users would take him 980 consecutive days. The number is the punchline, but it also gives the anniversary campaign a more tangible way to communicate just how large PhonePe’s user base has become.
Rather than focusing only on the company completing 10 years, the film puts the people using the platform at the centre of the story. The idea is that the decade has been built through millions of everyday interactions from making a first contactless payment to using digital payments while running a small business.
That makes the campaign less about ‘PhonePe is 10’ and more about ‘look at what 10 years of digital payments have added up to.’
The creative also avoids trying to make the 70-crore figure feel like just another corporate milestone. By turning it into a seemingly impossible speaking challenge, the campaign gives viewers a simple way to understand the scale.
At 494 words a minute, even someone who holds a speaking record would need nearly three years without stopping.
The film was conceptualised by Ogilvy and is being rolled out as a month-long campaign, led by PhonePe’s Instagram presence and extended across YouTube, X and LinkedIn.
After a decade of digital payments, PhonePe’s anniversary film makes its biggest number less about the company itself and more about the 70 crore people who made that number possible
Watch the campaign
Speaking on the campaign, Amit Doshi, Group Chief Marketing Officer, PhonePe, said, “Over the last decade, PhonePe’s journey has been intrinsically linked with the everyday progress of millions of Indians. With this brand film, beyond marking a 10-year milestone, our primary intent was an expression of gratitude toward our customers.”
He added, “By attempting the near-impossible task of thanking our users by name, we are honoring the individuals across Bharat who have powered this decade of progress with us.”
Speaking on the creative vision, Akshay Seth, Senior Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy Mumbai said, “70 crore in 10 years is an extraordinary number, but numbers tell us only one side of the story. We wanted to make this milestone about the people behind the number.”
“Sometimes double tapping on such rich data gives the best creative device and disruption. We got the record holder for being the fastest speaker and put him to the test by getting him to try and name every PhonePe user.”
