01Brand strategy & 360°
Positioning, architecture and launch playbooks that travel across television, print, OOH, retail and the open feed — built for Indian markets first.
Twenty-five years of brand-craft, story-craft and culture-work — from Ogilvy desks to भाव boards; from saffron-and-silk campaigns to films that travel from Jhumri to Janpath. The Heartland Story is the brand and communication practice inside Augurs.
On Bharat, storytelling,
and the idiom of the present.
भारत is not nostalgia. It is the living, breathing centre of a billion stories — told in mother-tongues, sung at weddings, whispered in WhatsApp groups, performed at panchayats. To work with Bharat is not to translate it for India; it is to let Bharat speak in its own voice, in its own time.
Some call it advertising. Some call it brand-craft. We call it सुनना, then telling.
For twenty-five years the work has been this: to sit between the village and the boardroom, the temple and the timeline, the elder and the algorithm — and to find the line, the frame, the script that holds them all. From Ogilvy and McCann to Ulka, JWT and DDB Mudra. From category-defining FMCG to channel launches that became cultural events. From films for the nation’s skill mission to campaigns for the police force that keeps a capital safe.
For a quarter-century, Devraj Tripathi has written, directed and shaped some of the country’s most-watched campaigns. From early years at TBWA and Euro RSCG — where he coined Deewana Bana De and worked on the Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin phenomenon — to leading creative across Ogilvy, FCB Ulka, McCann Erickson, ADK Fortune and DDB Mudra.
His work has lived on television, in cinemas, and on the lips of viewers across भारत. He helmed creative at Bhaav, the specialist healthcare agency, before founding The Heartland Story.
His training is not only in advertising: an M.A. in Modern History, a PG Diploma in Journalism & Mass Communication and a JR Research Fellowship from the University of Allahabad, and a B.Music in vocals from Bhatkhande, Lucknow. Perhaps that is why the work always carries the राग and the राज of Bharat together.
SET Max · Euro RSCG · coined
Sony Entertainment · creative team
Where the David & Goliath sentences were learned — and the discipline of the long idea.
The early yearsTruth, well told. A practice in scale and the global craft of campaign architecture.
Scale & craftThe Indian sensibility at full volume — where Bharat-thinking met mass-media muscle.
Bharat-thinkingHeritage brands, heritage craft. Where scripting became second nature.
Heritage craftInfluence at intersection — where digital first arrived as a serious idea, not a slide.
Digital, seriouslyHeading a specialist healthcare agency — the science of the body met the poetry of belief.
As head · healthcarePositioning, architecture and launch playbooks that travel across television, print, OOH, retail and the open feed — built for Indian markets first.
Hand-written scripts for films, campaigns and brand chapters. The kind of writing that gets memorised, mimicked and quoted at the chai stall.
Native-first thinking for the Indian internet. Reels that don’t feel imported, threads that earn the scroll, campaigns built for vernacular speed.
For founders, marketing leaders, government missions and institutions — counsel on what to say, when, and to whom. Quietly, when needed.
Branded content, long-form film, mission-led storytelling, AR and voice experiments where they earn their place in the brief.
A specialist practice for ministries, missions and PSUs — policy into pride, scheme into story, intent into image.
A partial index. Films and case studies on request.
Beyond this list: Tata Salt, Skill India, NABARD, GAIL India, Copper India, Delhi Police, Otrivin, BNHS and more — across a quarter-century of campaigns, launches and brand chapters.
The practice sits inside Augurs Technologies, which carries ideas from script to shipped product — custom software, AI/ML and platform delivery behind the storytelling. A campaign can become an app, a scheme can become a portal, and nobody has to broker between the two.
Some of the most rewarding work has been in service of the public good — for ministries, missions, public-sector undertakings and the institutions building भारत. Public work fails when it lectures. It lands when it recognises the citizen — their language, their day, their dignity.
Brand chapters, films, campaigns, public-good missions or consulting mandates — on their own, or alongside the system we are already building for you.