ADFEST kicks off its "Campaign Shoutout" series that will feature inspirational creative campaigns, with its first shoutout to none other than this year's INNOVA Lotus Grande winner, "Garuda Rakshak." The campaign for DSP Mutual Fund by Dentsu Creative, Gurugram in collaboration with Falco Robotics, also took home an INNOVA Lotus, a Lotus Roots, a Silver, a Bronze, and 2 Finalists. The campaign also secured DSP Mutual Fund the ADFEST 2026 Advertiser of the Year title. Let's dive a little deeper in the campaign to discover why the campaign deserved such dominant wins.
Once every 144 years, India hosts a festival the size of a small country. The Purna Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj pulled in 663 million people in January 2025. Officially the largest gathering of human beings in history.
Inside that ocean of devotees, a very modern problem was unfolding. Over the years, the Kumbh has seen more than a quarter of a million children get separated from their families. And in a gathering that big, every parent's phone instinct fails them. Mobile networks don't slow down at that density. They die.
Going Old School
The team's biggest enemy was network congestion, so they opted out of the network entirely. Garuda Rakshak runs completely offline. No 4G, no 5G, no cloud, no apps. The communication method came from 1970s marine navigation tech, the kind of thing ships used before satellites were widespread. It transmits critical updates over kilometres of festival ground using less than 1 kilobyte of data. A single emoji on WhatsApp is heavier.
Modern drone automation goes on top. Autonomous flight at 80 km/h, GPS, real time tracking. The result is a system that gets more reliable the more chaotic the environment becomes. Sometimes the older, weirder option is the unfair advantage nobody else thought to look at.
The festival grounds cover 4,000 hectares, split into four zones, each with a drone parked at a Lost & Found kiosk. A parent walks up. Child is gone. They tap the ID band. The drone takes off — locks onto the wristband signal, hovers above the child, releases a giant coloured marker high into the sky. A neon flag the entire crowd can see. Rescue teams sprint to it, reunite the family, and the drone heads back to base for the next call.
Trigger, search, signal, recovery. Almost embarrassingly simple. That's why it works.
This is the part worth sitting with. DSP Mutual Fund sells, well, mutual funds. Child safety at a religious festival is so far outside their category that on paper, they shouldn't even be in the room. And that's actually the move.
Most brand-purpose work picks a cause that's adjacent to the category — a snack brand fighting hunger, a sportswear brand championing movement. Easy fit, easy story. DSP did the opposite. They picked a problem their category had no natural reason to touch, and then earned the right to be there through action. A finance brand funded the engineering, the drones, and the ground operation. The brand line "Invest for Good" didn't just sit on the About page. It got built.
DSP Mutual Fund didn't only have a purpose. They walked the talk and proved it.
Quick mythology break. Garuda is a divine bird from Hindu tradition. The celestial guardian, the mount of Vishnu, protector of the righteous. Choosing that name for a rescue drone deployed at a Hindu pilgrimage isn't branding fluff. It's a cultural handshake. The technology speaks the same language as the people it's protecting.
There's an easier path most campaigns take in Asia, which is to import a global aesthetic and translate it locally. Garuda Rakshak took the harder one. It started from inside the culture and built outward, finding a symbol the audience already felt something about and putting the idea on top of it. The drone isn't named after a myth. It is the myth.
INNOVA Lotus rewards work that pushes creativity into unmapped territory, with many campaigns highlighting technological innovation. Garuda Rakshak took a different route in its innovation. The campaign had it all: a working piece of public safety infrastructure, dressed in mythology, funded by a financial brand, built around a 1970s communication protocol, deployed at a once in 144 years event.
And somewhere in that crowd of 663 million, a parent looked up and saw exactly where to go.
Stay tuned for more Campaign Shoutouts from ADFEST!
