Kota: A town with thousands of children, but no childhood.

Tucked away in a small corner of the desert state of Rajasthan, is Kota- a town filled with students who come from all over India to prepare for engineering and medical exams, with dreams of securing a future. But this is a town filled with children, but no childhood. Shipped away from home, most of the children who come here have never lived away from their parents before. Homesick and laden with exam pressure, these children are burdened with depression and anxiety, often leading to suicide.

Horlicks has always nourished children. But could it also nourish childhood?

We decided to restore childhood to the life of children suffering from stress and anxiety during the gruelling competitive exam period. Our partners? Their own mothers.

Culture Jacking for Emotional Hacking

Indians are notorious recyclers, and often reuse branded bottles & jars at home. We decided to take advantage of this age-old tradition by asking Moms from all over India to fill an empty bottle of Horlicks with a little memory of home. Horlicks then delivered these bottles of love to the children in Kota. We urged mothers to share a bit of Emotional Nutrition with their child during the exams, arguably the most stressful time in an Indian kid’s childhood. Thus, through the #BottleOfLove campaign, Horlicks helped provide children with the emotional strength to power through their exams

Delivering hope to the Student Suicide Capital of India

The Indian Institute of Technology is one of the hardest colleges to get into in the world. While 10-12% of the children who apply to Harvard get in, IIT only accepts 0.01% of its applicants. Every year 150,000 young students come to Kota to prepare for the entrance exams- most don’t make it. Crammed in small rooms, all alone, these children spend 16 hours a day studying. Between classes and homework, these kids have little to no time for themselves. Homesick, lonely and drowning in stress, these kids suffer from severe depression and anxiety. Those who can’t cope often resort to suicide.

Horlicks understands that the best antidote to homesickness is home. So, through the #BottleOfLove campaign, Horlicks enabled mothers to connect with their children living in Kota, delivering to them that bit of home that they so desperately craved.

Pre-empt the Pressure!

Exams begin in March, but the excruciating stress begins long before, with Kota hostels doubling up on their curriculum as early as January. So, Horlicks launched the #BottleOfLove campaign in the first week of the year, with Mothers of students sending bottles filled with a piece of home, to their children in Kota. A small part of the activity was captured in a two-and-a-half-minute video shared by Horlicks on the 18th of January.

Post this, Horlicks opened the activity to mothers across the country. Mothers could register on the microsite and get their own #BottleOfLove delivered to their child, anywhere in India.

The campaign was picked up by leading news & blog portals, as well as newspapers across the country. Mothers started posting videos talking about the initiative and participation exploded online. Children, not just in Kota, but all over the country, started receiving bottles of love.

A Genuine National Conversation

In just 8 weeks, the campaign sparked a national conversation, going viral with over 81 million views on social media, 1.4 billion impressions and a total reach of 102 million, taking over every leading publication.

In one of the most patriarchal countries in the world, our biggest impact was the empowerment we enabled for mothers across the country. Traditionally, education related decisions have always been taken by the man of the house; by enabling non-urban, non-social media friendly mothers to pour out their love to their kids studying thousands of miles away, we transcended ‘content’ and built a genuinely new sort of connect between mother & child.

And by moving the activation beyond Kota, we enabled every single Indian child living away from their parents to receive their own little dose of emotional nutrition.