Rohit Gulati, 34, bought his first car, a Maruti Eeco, last November. The car cost Rs4.58 lakh and he took a loan of about Rs 3 lakh to finance it. For Gulati, a logistics executive with Café Coffee Day in Delhi who earns Rs22,000 a month, the equated monthly instalment (EMI) of Rs 6,730 looked daunting. But he learnt about a scheme in the works that would potentially solve his problem.All Gulati had to do was offer the body of the car — doors, bonnet, boot — for advertising. The advertisers will pay the EMI, according to the scheme offered by Delhi-based start-up EMIfreecar. com. Gulati jumped at the chance, becoming the company’s first customer.EMIfreecar.com says it’s a win-win for car buyers as their EMIs are taken care of as well as advertisers who have a new platform for campaigns. Nearly 4 million people have shown interest in the offer, says the company.EMIfreecar.com was founded by Sachin Rastogi, 30, a serial entrepreneur who came upon the idea during a visit to Australia in 2013. “I had seen advertisements on private cars there and innovated on the model. I have linked it to EMIs, taking out the pain of buying a car and also offering a new medium to advertisers — carry their campaign on the roads,” he says. Rastogi has been working on the idea since September 2013. He has so far built a pool of 200 new car buyers like Gulati across Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore. Next on the to-do list is reaching out to advertisers after which EMIfreecar. com will be formally launched in April.“I need to have a sizeable pool — at least 200 cars in each city — before I approach advertisers. Say an advertiser wants 100 cars in one city, I should be able to deliver,” he adds. The huge interest by potential customers bodes well for the venture, according to him.Though the offer seems too good to believe, it comes with a few riders. Cars sporting ads must not be older than one year and have to run at least 1,500 km a month. Besides, car owners will have to install a GPS, which costs about Rs10,000, and deposit Rs10,000 as security when signing the contract. Owners have to also pay for the removable vinyl sticker (at Rs55 per sq feet). Needless to say, they have no say on the ads. Here is a primer: Lux Cozi vest, glucose biscuits, soaps, tyres, colas, mobile phones and the like.Rastogi says his company has insisted on new cars because buyers are likely to be more careful about maintenance. Such cars are less likely to be away for repairs. The GPS helps track cars and ensure they run for the minimum number of kilometers a month. Buyers take note: if the car fails to hit the 1,500-km limit in a month, they will have to shell out the EMI by themselves. If a car is taken off the road for a genuine reason, like an accident and it needs to hit the workshop, the EMI for those days would be deducted.EMIfreecar.com will come into the picture only after a car is purchased. The company will enter into a contract with a buyer and not with the lender. The company reimburses EMIs, says Rastogi. A buyer should pay at least 25% of the cost of a car. Even if a buyer has bought a car without taking a loan, he can make money by offering the car for advertising, he adds.To start with, the offer is on cars that cost up to Rs10 lakh. So if you are buying anything from a Tata Nano to an all-frills Honda City, you could offer the car’s body for ads. For the advertiser, the cost will be the EMI plus the margin that EMIfreecar.com will make. The company claims it will work out much cheaper than similar outdoor options, like hoardings and poster-size outdoor ads like MUPIs (see How Ad Rates Stack Up), according to Rastogi. “Plus, you get the mobility which a static hoarding won’t offer.”The idea of having ads on vehicles by itself is not new — think buses, trains, taxis etc. The difference in the case of EMIfreecar.com is that the concept has been extended to privately owned vehicles.Jessie Paul, CEO of Paul Writer Strategic Advisory, says the concept is similar to bus, train or auto branding. “For advertisers, the appeal lies in increasing visibility of say, a new biscuit launch. Or if they have a promo offer, like get a freebie on downloading an app, it will work. Some ads like those of engine oil, tyres work well on vehicles,” she says.Paul cites the case of Bhartiya City, a real estate developer in Bangalore, which covered eight buses at Rs2.30 lakh each in its campaign with vinyl stickers for a month. “Bhartiya was targeting tech workers in the IT parks region and complemented the bus ads by putting its campaigns on all billboards along the route. It’s great for hyper-local messaging.” That’s not all. Rothin Bhattacharya, head of strategy and marketing, HCL Infosystems, says the return on investment on ads in the traditional media is not as good as it used to be. “Media buying houses are looking at new options and there’s an opportunity for new ideas. In that context this is a different avenue,” he says.Nevertheless, the idea might not appeal to all advertisers. It will be attractive for say, Starbucks, which opens a new outlet at Koramangala in Bangalore. To create awareness, the coffee chain can run a campaign for a month on cars commuting in the area. But for others like Lava handsets, which is trying to position itself as an upscale brand via its ‘Art meets Smart’ campaigns on TV, running a campaign on a Tata Nano or a Maruti Alto may be counterproductive.Tarun Verma, deputy general manager, marketing, Lava International, says the company does select outdoor hoardings across key models. “Private cars as campaign vehicles is an innovative idea. But as we are building a premium positioning for our smartphones, with a focus on aesthetic beauty combined with functionality, a car may not work. TV is the main vehicle to uplift our brand,” he says.Verma believes ads on cars can save costs and as a marketing tool, it is an interesting one. But besides the risk of getting the messaging wrong, he says there is no control over campaigns. “We can control the quality of an outdoor hoarding, but not that of a private car. Here the entire control, on where the car goes, removing dust, dents is on the individual owner. There’s also lack of industry data to support this kind of investment,” he says. Adds Bhattacharya, “In a moving car, there’s no specific target audience selection. It’s a very dispersed media.”Besides, in a private car, choosing a route will be a problem, unlike in a public transport bus. “In metro cities, lots of people can easily do 1,500 km a month by commuting between home and office. If the car is in the basement parking it might be on the road for just three hours — early morning and late evening. It lacks day-long visibility, which a bus can offer,” says Paul. Overall, the appeal is limited as the medium itself is among the last considered by advertisers. TV is premium, followed by print, outdoor and then transport (bus, train, cabs etc).Rastogi is unruffled. “It’s a new area we are entering. We will be learning along the way. I already have four million people willing to give their cars and plenty of advertisers.” The idea of GPS is to precisely track routes, he says. “We will be creating a database, enabling advertisers to make informed decisions on routes, visibility and so on. I believe it’s an ideal vehicle for in-city campaigns.”EMIfreecar.com plans to go pan-India by the end of 2014. In the next three to four months, Rastogi plans to open showrooms of ad-ready cars, so that people can drive out with the assurance that EMIs will be taken care of.Gulati’s example suggests a category of customers exists for EMIfreecar.com. He says his dream purchase wouldn’t have been possible without the offer from EMIfreecar.com. “Personally, my lifestyle has been upgraded. As I drive around, the visibility of the campaigns I carry will increase and I won’t have to worry about the next loan instalment.”