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Scam 2026: HDFC Securities' AI That Dared You to Win
HDFC
AI-Powered Interactive Avatar Activation
Introduction
Financial scams are smarter than ever, and so are the people behind them. HDFC Securities launched Scam 2025 to put that reality directly in your hands. Partnering with IIC, they built something India had never seen before: a hyper-realistic MetaHuman avatar of actor Manoj Pahwa, installed at a premium mall, powered by live AI and designed to scam you in real time.
You talked. It listened. It questioned, adapted, and manipulated in real time, face to face, with no script you could predict. A live, two-way confrontation that turned an ordinary mall visit into a human-centric battleground for digital defense. The pressure, the manipulation, the urgency all of it real enough to feel, so that when an actual scammer calls, you'll already know exactly what to do.
Objective
The primary goal was to transform passive audience awareness into active, experiential education. HDFC Securities needed a medium that would:
Make scam awareness tangible, memorable, and emotionally engaging for everyday consumers
Bridge the gap between their offline brand presence and their online Scam 2025 digital campaign
Create a gamified experience that rewarded users for resisting fraud tactics, reinforcing brand recall through positive participation
Drive traffic from the physical installation to HDFC Securities' digital content and platforms
Our solution
IIC conceptualised and built "Outsmart the Scammer" a first-of-its-kind live AI installation where users engaged in a simulated phone call with a conversational AI avatar of actor Manoj Pahwa, cast as a cunning financial scammer.
The Experience
Users stepped up to a physical kiosk installed at a premium mall, facing a large Transparent OLED screen displaying the hyper-realistic MetaHuman avatar of Manoj Pahwa — making the avatar feel like it was physically present in the room
A push-to-talk microphone enabled live, two-way conversation with the AI
The avatar responded in real time — reacting, emoting, and adapting just as a real scammer would
The interaction was designed to feel genuinely unpredictable, with no two conversations following the same path
Choosing a Scenario
At the start of each session, users selected from five distinct scam scenarios, each drawn from HDFC Securities' Scam 2025 TVC campaign. Each scenario had its own scripted journey, tone, and AI prompts to keep responses contextually accurate:
Get My OTP the scammer attempts to extract a one-time password under false pretences
Extract Bank Details manipulation tactics designed to obtain sensitive banking information
Make Me Panic high-pressure urgency created to force a hasty, emotional response
Email ID Phishing persistent requests for the user's email address to enable further fraud
The Gameplay
Each session ran for three minutes, keeping the experience sharp and high-energy
The objective was to resist giving away any personal information while keeping the scammer actively engaged
Simply saying "no" was not enough to score high
Users were rewarded for creativity deflecting with clever excuses, playing along without complying, or leading the AI in circles
The AI scammer escalated its tactics and tone dynamically the more it was resisted
The Aggression Meter
A live on-screen meter tracked the user's performance throughout the session
Score increased when users deflected, ignored requests, or wasted the scammer's time with creative responses
Score decreased when users complied even providing fake information counted as a loss
Users who pushed the meter past the 75% threshold within the time limit were declared winners
Rewards and Takeaways
Winners were rewarded for successfully outsmarting the AI scammer
Every participant received a personalised personality profile based on how they handled the interaction, ensuring even non-winners left with a positive, branded takeaway
At the close of every session, a QR code directed users to HDFC Securities Scam 2025 digital content, converting physical foot traffic into measurable online engagement
Technology
MetaHuman Character Creation
The avatar was built using MetaHuman framework. Using reference images of Manoj Pahwa, the team crafted a high-fidelity digital double with meticulous attention to skin texture, facial geometry, and clothing matched to his appearance in the HDFC TVC.
Voice Cloning
Manoj Pahwa's voice was extracted from available sources, cleaned, and used to train a personalised voice model capturing his distinct Punjabi cadence and speaking nuances for authentic real-time synthesis.
Real-Time Conversational Pipeline
User speech was captured via a push-to-talk microphone, converted to text, processed by an AI language model to generate a contextual scammer response, synthesised back into Manoj Pahwa's voice, and animated onto the MetaHuman all within sub-500ms latency on an RTX 5090 pipeline.
IMPACT
Transformed a passive awareness campaign into a hands-on, two-way experience that users actively participated in and remembered
Created genuine emotional engagement — users laughed, strategised, and competed, forming a direct personal connection to the scam-awareness message
Successfully converted pysical foot traffic into measurable digital engagement through end-session QR codes linked to HDFC's online campaign
Demonstrated a scalable model for brand-led experiential AI — proving that real-time conversational avatars can function reliably in unpredictable, public-facing environments
Reinforced HDFC Securities' brand positioning as a forward-thinking, consumer-first financial brand
For most participants, this was their first encounter with a real-time AI avatar — leaving them genuinely startled by how human it felt, and sparking conversations about AI and fraud awareness long after they walked away.
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