.CNhas5IL_ZqBJiz.webp)
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.
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.
Contact Us Now:
