BHARAT BUSINESS Process Outsourcing (BPO) has started airing radio commercials to popularise ’Dial 139 - Rail Sampark’, the official national enquiry channel for Indian Railways. The smart and witty commercials are being aired on Radio Mirchi, Big FM, My FM and Radio City, across 30 Indian cities, including metro cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.

Leo Burnett, Ad agency for 139, has scripted a couple of commercials, which use humour to get the message across. These simple yet hilarious spots convey ample information about the nature of the service. The first ad begins with a son asking his father to tell why he was not in the photo album of his parent’s wedding ceremony. Just when the father is embarrassed at his son’s innocence, a male voice-over follows the conversation by saying, "You may not get answers for some questions, but you will get them for all queries pertaining to Indian Railways. Dial 139 for booking railway tickets, PNR status, fare enquiry, accommodation, tatkal seats, journey planning, concession and cancellation rules, refund rules and trains between stations and train timings. You get all this information within few minutes."

In the second advertisement, the male voice-over intervenes and repeats the same script when son asks his father as to "why can’t he marry his mom when he (boy’s father) could marry his mom."

"With the objective to popularise the rail enquiry no 139, the service has been branded as Dial 139 for Rail Sampark, which provides instant access to an array of railway travel information. However, the larger objective is to provide various travel services to the Indian Railway passengers so that Dial 139 evolves as their travel companion. One of the recent introduction is Dial ’A’ Ticket, which takes the travel planning experience to the next level of convenience, a catalyst to the growth of Indian travel industry," Shubhendu Ranjan Deb, general manager (marketing), Bharat BPO said.

Talking about future campaigns, Deb said, "As we progress, the communication will focus more on the value added services available on Dial 139."

Explaining about the theme and objective the ad campaign is set to achieve, Sainath Saraban – creative head, Leo Burnett said, "The campaigns are consciously kept simple as to connect with people from all sections of society. Railways as a mode of transport is used by people throughout the country and the idea is to sensitise users of Indian Railways that information is just a call away without much effort."

About Bharat BPO services ltd

Bharat BPO is a joint venture company of Omnia BPO services and Spanco Telesystems and Solutions Ltd. The consortium had bagged the contract of Indian Railways for operating Integrated Train Enquiry Services (ITES) all across the country. A company under the name of Bharat BPO Services Limited has been promoted to implement this project. While the zonal call centres for this project are located at the four metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, the regional call centres are set up at Noida, Ahmedabad, Mysore and Kolkata to begin with. This operation has been started with about 700 seats and 2000 persons and is likely to scale up to 2000 seats and 5500 persons in the next year.

About DIAL 139 - Rail Sampark

’Dial 139 -Rail Sampark’, Indian Railways’ tele – helpline was launched in July 2007, by Railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav with the objective of bringing high quality information services within reach of every railway passenger. The service handles enquiries pertaining to arrival, departure, schedules of trains plying between two stations, PNR and reservation of berth status, fare enquiry, availability of tatkal accommodation, journey planning, concession and cancellation rules, refund rules and trains between stations.