A three-month-long Public Relations (PR) blitz that catapulted a group of young engineers from the Kochi Startup Village and their wearable technology innovation came to global attention, and has won a top prize at the 2014 SABRE Awards South Asia.
Delhi-based MD Niche Media Consultants has bagged the Diamond SABRE Award for Excellence in Public Relations in the Superior Achievement in Measurement and Evaluation category.
MD Niche Media Consultants, which has offices in Trivandrum and Kochi, had successfully run the PR campaign for Fin, an innovative gadget developed by RHL Vision, a company incubated at Startup Village in Kochi, with a variety of applications in the wearable technology field.
Instituted by the US-based Holmes Report, the SABRE Awards are a benchmark of excellence in the PR industry. MD Niche Media Consultants had won two SABRE Gold prizes last year for its PR campaign for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
The Diamond SABRE award, one of only three, was received by MD Niche CEO S. Suresh, at a gala ceremony held at the Hotel Holiday Inn in New Delhi earlier this week, from Paul Holmes, Publisher and CEO of The Holmes Report which recognizes and honours the best practices in the public relations industry worldwide.
MD Niche was among six reputed Indian and international public relations companies competing for the prize in the final round. The company was also shortlisted for a Gold SABRE award for its campaign promoting the National Museum's 'The Body in Indian Art' exhibition.
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"The quality of the campaigns for the top SABRE Awards this year has been remarkable," said Holmes, who presented the top three SABRE Diamond Awards.
The win gives MD Niche an automatic entry into the competition for the Asia-Pacific region SABRE awards, which will be announced in Beijing in September.
"This is a huge honour for Kerala and its talented and hardworking young generation, which is ready to compete with the best of the world in every sphere. The award is an indicator that they can achieve worldwide recognition and success with the right support for their endeavours." said Suresh.
"The talented artists of Kerala proved it with India's first Biennale in 2012-13 and the rising technology world stars at RHL Vision and Startup Village have done so again," he added.
Fin, a ring-shaped wearable gadget can transform the palm into a digital interface capable of controlling multiple electronic devices.
RHL chose crowd funding to raise the capital needed to develop the gadget and take it into production.
The Fin campaign which ran on Indiegogo from January to March and was supported by an intensive PR drive during the period, raised $202,547 from 1,610 funders - 203% of its original goal of $100,000 to become one of the most successful crowdfunding initiatives by an Indian startup firm.
