~ ITC Foods CMO Shuvadip Banerjee on leaning into regional festivals with authenticity — denser Rath Yatra plays, Yippee street-style Durga Puja sampling, and Bingo Tedhe Medhe meets Sukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol ~
Mumbai, September 2026: ITC Foods is treating India’s festival calendar less like a Diwali-Dussehra media burst and more like a year-round local storytelling brief. In a Mint interview published today, Shuvadip Banerjee, chief marketing officer of ITC Foods, outlines how the company is chasing festive pride that travels beyond home states — with authenticity as the filter, not blanket sponsorships.
The sharpest recent example: this year’s Jagannath Rath Yatra in Puri, Odisha, which Banerjee frames as ITC Foods most intensive marketing campaign yet at that festival. The logic is depth over spray — show up where culture codes are thickening and curiosity across regions is rising, rather than parking logos at every pandal.
Durga Puja planning is already on that track. For Yippee, Banerjee floats an exit-path activation: after devotees leave a pujo pandal, an alley built for pan-Asian street-style noodle sampling — Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia — nodding to Kolkata’s long Chinese-food history. For Bingo Tedhe Medhe, the brand is working a campaign with Sukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol, using the nonsense-verse classic to celebrate everyday tedhapan” — the playful crookedness that fits Bingo’s fun pillar.
The footprint stretches past Bengal. Banerjee cites presence at Durga Puja across West Bengal, Puri Rath Yatra and Bali Yatra in Odisha, Chhath in Bihar, Bihu in Assam and Onam in Kerala — a map that treats regional festivals as national media moments once culture codes travel.
Marketing take: ITC Foods is rewriting festive marketing as cultural immersion — fewer shallow logo drops, more festival-native stories that let Yippee and Bingo borrow local pride instead of shouting over it.
