McDowell's No.1 Soda partners with DriveU

McDowell's No 1 Soda by United Spirits Limited, a Diageo Group Company, has joined hands withapp based on-demand driver service start-up DriveU to launch a new feature which will enable friends share cost of rides.
The partnership creates first of its kind benchmarkswhere a consumer brand and a startup come together to provide a need-based consumer offering, that is based on a long term revenue sharing model, the company officials said today.
McDowell's No 1 Soda will provide marketing support and generate demand for DriveU with an ambition of generating half million downloads and completing one million rides in the first year of association, they said, adding a strong mainstream and digital campaign will be rolled out. The DriveU through this partnership gets to leverage the scale and the marketing expertise that McDowell's No 1 Soda as a brand can bring to the table.

"As a brand we look and seek partnership which will help bring our purpose to life, and the partnership that we have with DriveU is one such association which helps us to do that," United Spirits Limited Senior Vice President, Marketing, Subroto Geed told reporters here.
Not wishing to share numbers on the marketing spends,USL officials said they were looking at a three year partnership, which was exclusive for both.
"We started this company a year and a half ago, with full first year of operation we did over one lakh trips and this year we have an audacious goal with our partnership with McDowell's No 1 Soda, our plan is to exceed one million trips.

"We have 1500 drivers across six cities in India today and we will grow that to about 10,000 before the end of the year," DriveU CEO Ramprasad Shastry said.

DriveU claims to be the country's first and fastest growing on-demand private driver service, and the SHARE feature is available immediately across all DriveU markets - Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai metros.
SHARE is available on the DriveU application that can be downloaded on iOS, android or on the DriveU website, using which the host (car owner/primary commuter) can invite their co-rider to join them and the invited co-rider maychoose to accept and ride with the host.

Responding to a question, Geed said a tie-up like this provides a great opportunity to become a part of shared economy as the consumers that we have today are increasingly moving towards shared economy.
He said "we are not just looking at this as brand specific driven by numbers, but also at a overall consumer engagement and trend level..."
On partnership with McDowell's, Geed said "one thing is that McDowell's is the largest brand in terms of scale, but other thing is the linkage back with our purpose...The purposeis strengthening the bonds of brotherhood, bonds of Yaari.."
"Going forward we will look for partnerships for all our brands... We are open to how we structure the partnerships," he added.