A code on the pack became a loyalty card.

The business problem

In Indian agriculture, a brand loses its customer at the dealer counter. The customer pays cash, carries the pack home and disappears: no receipt, no record, no relationship. Syngenta India spent each season earning that customer's trust, then started again from zero the next year. Loyalty programmes were built for people with credit cards and email addresses, not for someone buying crop protection at a village dealer. The brand was not missing data. It was missing the customer.

The creative idea

Do not ask customers to do something new. Put the reward inside the one thing they already do, buying the product, and inside the one device they already own. A code on the pack they have paid for is the entry point. The phone is the loyalty card, the wallet and the proof of purchase. The customer scans the code in Syngenta's Cropwise Grower app and cashback reaches their own UPI account in seconds, with every scan also entering a monthly lucky draw. We did not run a campaign about buying. We rebuilt what buying is.

The campaign

The line was Chutki mein cashback kamao, cashback in a snap. It had to be understood in one glance by someone standing in a shop doorway, so speed itself became the visual. Every execution repeated the same three verbs, download, scan, win, and every frame carried the pack and the code, so the ad was always one scan away from the reward. Behind it sat a film system, not a single ad: reels, teasers, explainers and films of real customers shot in working dealer shops.

Markets and languages

The programme runs across nineteen Indian states and was transcreated into ten languages. It was never one national burst. It ran as many local campaigns, each timed to its own crop calendar, always-on since 2022.

Why customers trusted it

This audience has seen schemes fail before, so trust was built into the mechanics rather than the messaging. Only a genuine pack carries a valid code, and the scan verifies it before paying. A pack cannot be scanned twice. The money arrives in the customer's own account in seconds. Payouts are reconciled weekly and draw winners are announced publicly every month.

The result

Gold at The Economic Times India DigiPlus Awards 2026, in Excellence in Use of Mobile to Drive Sales, awarded jointly to Syngenta India and Hoopla (see the official winners list). There is no modelled attribution behind it, because a scan is a purchase that actually happened: customers buy, or buy again, to qualify. The cashback does not reward the pack they just bought. It buys the next one.

What made it work

Three decisions. The reward was put inside an existing habit instead of asking for a new one. The phone was treated as infrastructure, not as a media channel. And the communication was built as one system across ten languages, so brand and performance worked as one machine. The full story is in Gold at The Economic Times India DigiPlus Awards 2026.