HDFC Securities Moved Generative AI Off the Screen and Into a Premium Mall With IIC's Conversational Avatar Pipeline

Immersive Tech

Pranay Bhandare

6mins

Mar 20, 2026

Scam Awareness Taken Off the Screen and Into a Retail Space

Financial fraud education has a format problem. Banners get ignored. Short videos play once and disappear. The message lands, but the instinct rarely follows.

HDFC Securities made a different choice. The brand moved the scam-awareness campaign into a premium mall, placed it inside an interactive kiosk, and let visitors experience the pressure of a live fraudulent call — in real time, face to face with a conversational avatar.

The campaign was called "Outsmart the Scammer." Ink In Caps built the entire experience.

The Brief Behind the Build

HDFC Securities needed the offline activation to connect directly with the Scam 2025 digital campaign. Three outcomes mattered: make the message emotionally memorable, drive foot traffic into measurable digital engagement, and reinforce brand recall without turning a serious topic into entertainment.

That combination required more than a display screen. It required a format where the visitor had to act, not just observe.

Conversational Avatar Installation — Core Experience Design

The installation placed visitors in front of a Transparent OLED screen running a live avatar of actor Manoj Pahwa, cast as a scammer. A push-to-talk microphone carried the visitor's voice into the system. The avatar responded in real time — shifting tone, changing tactics, and reacting to whatever the visitor said.

Visitors chose from five scam scenarios at the start of each session:

OTP extraction
Bank detail phishing
Panic-trigger calls
Email harvesting
Identity probing

Each scenario ran for three minutes. The avatar stayed contextually aligned throughout, making each interaction feel genuinely different.

The session was not about refusing the scammer. It was about resisting creatively. Deflection, misdirection, and delay all counted. Even providing false information registered as a loss. The system rewarded active thinking, not passive refusal.

Live Aggression Meter — Making Performance Visible

A live aggression meter tracked every session in real time. The score rose when visitors stalled the scammer or redirected the conversation. It dropped when they complied. Anyone who crossed the 75% threshold within the time limit won the round.

That scoring layer served a practical purpose. It made the session legible in a crowded public space. Passersby could read the outcome instantly. Participants understood the stakes without a briefing. And the competitive element gave people a reason to try again.

Technical Pipeline — What Made the Latency Work

The avatar was built using MetaHuman character creation, matched to reference images of Manoj Pahwa. Skin texture, facial structure, and wardrobe continuity with the TVC were all preserved. His voice was cleaned and modelled to retain cadence and natural speech patterns.

The live interaction pipeline ran as follows:

Microphone input
Real-time transcription
Language processing
Voice synthesis
Avatar animation and facial response

The entire loop ran at sub-500ms latency on an RTX 5090 pipeline. That speed was not a technical footnote. It was the reason the experience felt like a real conversation rather than a demo.

For any brand considering live conversational characters in public-facing environments, latency is the variable that separates a functional prototype from a deployable product.

Campaign Results — Three Days, Measurable Impact

The activation ran for three days and delivered results that went beyond awareness:

2,000+ direct visitor interactions
200,000+ impressions generated
100% digital CTA completion rate via end-session QR journey
Every participant received a personalised scam-resistance personality profile
Non-winners received a branded takeaway, extending recall beyond the kiosk

The post-session QR link converted in-person participation into tracked digital engagement. That closed the loop between the mall activation and the Scam 2025 online campaign.

Immersive Brand Activations — The Format That Converts

The strongest outcome here was not the avatar. It was the structure connecting every element — environment, interaction, scoring, and post-session journey — into one measurable sequence.

That structure is what separates an immersive activation from a spectacle. Spectacles draw crowds. Structured experiences create recall, drive digital action, and generate data that marketing teams can actually use.

For brand managers and decision-makers evaluating experiential formats for retail environments, event campaigns, or product launches, the HDFC Securities activation is a working reference point. The format is scalable. The pipeline is proven. The results are documented.

Ink In Caps builds these environments for brands that need precision alongside ambition.

About the Author

Pranay Bhandare
SEO Executive