KidZania is an interactive family entertainment and learning center that empowers, inspires, and educates through real-life role-playing activities and is globally present across 26 cities in 23 countries. The brand completed 10 years in India last year.
Speaking about the brand journey and challenges faced during the 10 years, Rahul Dhamdhere, Chief Marketing Officer at KidZania said, “Built like a city, KidZania has paved roads, battery-operated vehicles, buildings, a functioning economy, and its currency. By blending reality with entertainment, we provide a developmental platform where children can discover, explore, and learn about the real world. When you come to KidZania city- which is a replica of an exact city, we got an airport, biscuit factory, cinema theater, etc. We have different role plays through which the children are taught about day-to-day life. All these role plays and establishments are branded by brands. Every role play and activity has a duration of 20-25 minutes because that is the attention span of every child. We have been designed by educators. Coming to the challenges, the pandemic period was a challenging period for us like for any other brands. Malls were the first to shut and last to open, within that KidZania was last to open and we were further affected because children were vaccinated later. Due to this, we have suffered a little bit of a dip in business. A lot of brands who are purpose partners continued with us, a couple of them left us because of the obvious reasons of lull in business. We have signed new brands like Air India recently. Many of the brands renewed their contract with us. We are back to normal in terms of footfalls. We are targeting 8-9 percent growth in the next financial year.”
Elaborating on a successful brand collaboration, Dhamdhere said, “With all the brands we have had a successful association. To name a few, We have partnered with Kinder Joy and last year we did a Metaverse activity with the brand. The brand- Laughing Cow cheese does a lot of activities inside KidZania. We have partnered with Mad Over Donuts; we brought the brand and the Laughing Cow cheese together; they together came up with one particular product – Cheese Donuts, the product is being retained in KidZania.”
The age category for KidZania is 4-14 years.
“Our biggest chunk of customers is from the age category of 6-12 years,” Dhamdhere underlined.
“There are certain rides and role plays for toddlers, but not many. But, in KidZania- Noida, Delhi, we are coming with a new concept which will be launched in the month of April-May- it is called KidZania Neighbourhood. As mentioned earlier, KidZania is a city created for children, Neighbourhood will be the miniature city created for the toddlers (aged between 3-6 years),” the CMO said.
Balancing Education and Entertainment:
“It’s important that both aspects should go hand in hand in this period of time. The critical point is how much entertainment and how much education should be part of the activities. Entertainment can be used in different forms; even the new education policy talks about role plays and vocation. At KidZania, we make it interesting for the children, where a child will get an opportunity to fly an aircraft in the actual cockpit. We have TVS racing experience for the kids, where they are taught how much safety is important while riding a bike. They have to wear gear, helmet, and they are given a license; after that, they can go to a small street in KidZania city and they can ride a bike. In the process, we are teaching them the importance of safety and procedures of getting a driving license, etc.”
We have space for the real estate brand Mahindra Lifespaces, where children are taught about rainwater harvesting, the local flora, and fauna are very critical. They are taught that as well there.
In terms of footfalls, the Delhi and Bombay KidZania are nearly the same.
“The footfalls are almost the same, maybe 10,000-15,000 up and down. We have got five locations on our radar in terms of expansion plans. Bangalore is our first priority followed by Hyderabad, Chennai, and Ahmedabad. The only challenge that we face is that we are large in terms of our size because we need to give a complete experience of a city. We have 70,000 sq ft in Bombay and 100,000 sq ft in Delhi; hence, we are finding it difficult to get that space. If we have a place then we are good to go,” he added.
KidZania India is a big contributor to the global numbers in terms of footfalls.
“The two places that have a high number of footfalls are India and Japan,” he added.
“KidZania is very big in terms of school picnics because of the educational aspects we offer. With Bombay and Delhi put together we get around over 3 lakhs children visiting us annually,” said Dhamdhere.
According to the CMO, the most popular activity in terms of role-play is aviation.
“Fire Brigade, DHL are also other role-play activities which are popular among children,” he said.
In terms of marketing channels, the brand concentrates on Digital.
“We are communicating with our biggest target audience who are mothers and kids. Children are not on social media, but they consume a lot of content on YouTube. We do Print ads as well, but I would say a majority of the marketing spends are skewed towards Social Media. The spend would be 70 percent digital and 30 percent traditional. We are on Radio as well” Dhamdhere concluded.
