How political parties are redefining election campaign with technology
With the soon approaching 2019 general elections, political campaigning is being rapidly disrupted with the latest technology. In this age of digitalisation and advanced technologies, yesteryear’s methods of rallies and pamphlets distribution would not strike the right chord with today’s voters. Understanding the changing preferences and behaviour patterns of their audience, political parties are quick to adopt the latest technology, in their bit to best reach out to voters in India.
One of the enterprises at the epicentre of tech-enabled political campaigning is Telebu, with its suite of enterprise communication products. With its marquee product, grptalk, the Hyderabad-based company has been working with political parties to help them streamline communication and campaigning. Grptalk is a unique audio-conferencing solution that enables 3 to over 10,000 participants on a single call and utilises PSTN network to enable high-quality ‘instant conferencing’ (dial-out calls), without any app download, PASSCODES, etc.
Recently, Telebu’s solution grptalk was used by Sachin Kalyanshetti, BJP MLA from the Solapur constituency and Solapur District President. Kalyanshetti was facing communication challenges with the party cadre when they decided to give Telebu’s grptalk a shot. Grptalk helped them for addressing the party people for the Bike Rally, bridging the communication gap between the constituency and the booth people. Telebu has successfully hosted 3200 people on a single call, where the MLA addressed the party members for the bike rally in Solapur city. The campaign was initiated after National President’s instructions to all BJP states offices.
“Ahead of the general assembly elections, technology has become imperative in the election campaigning process. The vote bank has progressed towards using more advanced technologies, so it was only a matter of time till political parties made the transition as well,” says Kaveri Reddy, VP, Business Development & Operations, Telebu Communications.
In the past, the company has helped the likes of the Government of Telangana’s CT and Excise department; who use grptalk to communicate with over 100 concerned Assistant Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners on a single call. Another one is partnering with the Revenue Department of Karnataka in Shivamogga. The Deputy Commissioner K A Dayanand uses grptalk to oversee daily activities and communicates with over 5,000 officers from different departments. Furthermore, grptalk is also used by the revenue department to address the collective queries of Tehsildars, Managers and Village accountants (often more than 200-300 participants) on a single call.
Undoubdetly applications like Whatsapp and Twitter are also widely used but grptalk allows participants to not to download the app or connect to the internet to conference call, as opposed to WhatsApp, where call participants need to have WhatsApp on their phone, and be connected to the internet to be able to conference call.
Political parties also seemed to have the traditional problem of finding the right channel of communication to connect with their voters. “Our range of solutions from Bulk SMS to IVR-based feedback collection, and even Missed Call Number services have gone a long way in easing this conundrum. In terms of election campaigning, Telebu helps political parties in connecting party Workers across the nation or state or district to amplify campaign reach via regular conference calls, collect Prompt Feedback with regular two-way communication and understand citizen pulse by connecting to volunteers across constituencies,” she mentions.
One of the goals of Telebu is to expand further into governance. “We sees great value in services, and this is a sentiment that is reflected by the government bodies that we assist in their operations and functioning,” Reddy expresses.
