DSP Mutual Fund found lost children at Kumbh with offline drone

The Purna Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj, India (2025) drew an estimated 660 million attendees; at a crowd that dense the cellular network is unusable, so every obvious digital tool — a tracking app, an SMS beacon, a call — fails precisely when a child wanders off. Over 250,000 people, many of them children, had vanished during past events.

A financial brand's conventional response is to sponsor a lost-and-found booth or run a sentimental ad. Both depend on the very network that is down, and both broadcast a message rather than changing an outcome on the ground.

DSP Mutual Fund turned brand purpose into an offline rescue system instead of an ad. Children arriving received cheap wristbands that beam an ultra-low-frequency geo-signal using 1970s marine-navigation radio-band tech — 1KB of data reaching several kilometres with no cellular or app dependency.

Gave children wristbands that beam an ultra-low-frequency geo-signal needing no network, and sent a Garuda-shaped drone to locate and mark them for ground rescuers.

ULF radio needs no carrier, so wristbands keep signaling when phones have no bars.

The drone flies over the crowd, bypassing the network and ground congestion.

The Garuda form makes parents trust the tech, ensuring adoption at scale.

Rescuing children builds trust in the brand, which is what a fund sells.

When your channel breaks, build the solution into the physical environment with a token people carry and a guide that works on terrain, not servers.

It won a 2026 ADFEST Lotus. The operator reports every wristband-wearing child was reunited, 78% in five minutes — its own claim. The drone system's operators said authorities expressed interest in replicating it for future mass events and disaster zones, pointing the mechanism at emergency response rather than one festival.