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Global powerhouse Hinduja Group owned two mobility brands – Ashok Leyland, India’s leading commercial vehicle brand and Optare, the maker of London’s iconic double-decker buses. In line with their global ambition and strategy, Ashok Leyland would focus on their core business of diesel-powered vehicles alternate fuels, while Optare would focus on and build the group’s EV operations. Optare, given its historic association with diesel-powered buses, needed to be rebranded for this new reality.

Delving deep into the authenticity and strengths of both, Ashok Leyland and Optare, we realized that a combination of the two presented the best of both worlds: cutting-edge research and product development capabilities in Europe, and the reach and trust in a large part of the developing world – the ‘global south’, so to speak. The fact that the new brand would leverage both these made for a compelling argument. In creating the brand narrative, we leveraged an important insight: that a real difference in the fight against climate change would be impractical without the active participation of the global south. This became the basis for the brand proposition: democratizing zero-carbon mobility for the good of the planet.