No internet, no problem: AI dials up Bharat

In a leap toward inclusive innovation, Centerfruit from the house of Perfetti Van Melle India, in collaboration with WPP and BharatGPT.ai and Google Cloud, launched the ‘Centerfruit Tongue Twister Challenge’—a voice-based GenAI campaign aimed at engaging audiences in rural regions of Uttar Pradesh, where limited access to data, let alone television and digital, has long posed a challenge. By eliminating the need for the internet, apps, or even smartphones, the campaign brought fun, flavour, and technology to communities that are often left out of mainstream brand conversations.

As part of its ongoing ‘Kaisi jeebh laplapayee’ (How the tongue twists) campaign, Centerfruit introduced a hyper-local Voice AI that directly called users on their feature phones. With a simple call back, users engaged in tongue-twister challenges all the while chatting in their own dialects—transforming a basic phone call into a gamified brand experience full of laughter, linguistic flair, and regional pride.

At the core of the activation was a scalable voice infrastructure, allowing millions even those with basic, non-internet-enabled phones, to interact with the brand in real time. No app, no internet, no data, just a phone call to access an AI-powered entertainment experience.

Sharing his thoughts on the campaign, Gunjan Khetan, marketing director of Perfetti Van Melle India, said, “Rural Bharat is an important market for Centerfruit, and while we have been able to reach millions through Television, there are still pockets where narrating our brand story has been a challenge. However, the latest Voice AI tech activation is a game-changer, it allows us to not just reach but have conversations with people outside of the traditional digital ecosystem. By using AI and creative storytelling, we bring the Kaisi Jeebh Laplapayee spirit to life in a way that feels local, effortless, and deeply inclusive. We believe this is a powerful step toward ensuring that no consumer is left out of the conversation, no matter where they are or what technology they have access to.”

The solution is deployed on Google Cloud with a containerised orchestration layer that ensures low-latency inference and high availability under concurrent user loads. User voice input is captured via a real-time audio stream and processed using BharatGPT, CoRover's proprietary multimodal large language model. Optimised for Indian languages and dialects, BharatGPT performs speech-to-text conversion and context-aware response using proprietary speech generation model, aligning outputs with Center Fruit's brand personality through witty, generative dialogue.

The system also integrates Gemini, Google's multimodal AI model, to evaluate user attempts at tongue twisters. It provides live scoring based on pronunciation accuracy, speech pace, and clarity. GCP's high-speed networking fabric enables near-instant feedback and responsiveness. Beyond the tongue twister challenge, users could also ask questions through BharatGPT.ai’s Ask Engine, receiving instant responses in their regional dialects, making the overall experience interactive, and conversational.

Ajay Gupte, CEO–South Asia, Wavemaker, said, “By combining creativity with scalable tech infrastructure, we’re proud to help create a campaign that’s as inclusive as it is innovative—one that speaks directly to people, in their language, on the devices they already use."

Karthik Nagarajan, CEO of Hogarth India, said, “When creativity meets technology, you don’t just reach people — you resonate. As a content experience company, we specialise in delivering engaging, enriching brand experiences irrespective of the medium. In this case, we are very grateful to Perfetti Van Melle for providing a platform that enabled us to create such an experience at scale for its audience."

Campaign’s take: When most campaigns chase eyeballs, Centerfruit just chased ears—and did it without a single megabyte. In a refreshingly lo-fi pivot, Perfetti Van Melle India, WPP, Google Cloud, Hogarth and BharatGPT came together for the ‘Centerfruit Tongue Twister Challenge’, a voice-based GenAI campaign that brought entertainment to rural Uttar Pradesh without apps, screens, or internet. Just a call on a feature phone triggered a witty, dialect-rich challenge—no swipe, just speak.

This isn’t just creative tech deployment—it’s a case study in purposeful innovation. The campaign underlines how voice AI can bridge India’s digital divide while reminding marketers that true engagement doesn’t always need 5G. Built on BharatGPT’s stack, with Google Cloud’s low-latency smarts and Wavemaker-Hogarth’s execution muscle, it shows that playful brand storytelling and regional relevance can coexist without shiny tech dependencies.

Yet, while entertaining rural audiences is a start, it shouldn’t be the finish line. The same infrastructure could be used for meaningful interactions—addressing farming queries, healthcare access, or even ed-tech needs. As BharatGPT evolves, it could serve not just marketing goals, but national ones. After all, rural India doesn’t need just innovation—it needs intention. And campaigns like this might just be the warm-up lap for a longer, deeper run.