Of the 267 million tobacco users in India, nearly 72 million adults smoke bidis hand-rolled cigarettes made of tobacco wrapped in tendu leaves making it the most widely used tobacco product in the country. Bidis outsell cigarettes in India by 8-to-1. India’s homegrown bidi industry is notoriously unregulated and has been extending its reach and targeting potential consumers in another space often lacking in oversight: social media.
While all tobacco products are marketed on the internet where restrictions are more difficult to enforce, the marketing strategies used for each product vary. Today, Vital Strategies released a new study, Selling Death on Social Media: How Bidis Are Reaching Consumers Online, which explores the marketing strategies used by bidi companies and how and through which social media platforms bidis are marketed to consumers.
To learn more about the role of marketing in bidi use we sat down with Vital Strategies’ Sharan Kuganesan, Program Manager for the Global Tobacco Control and STOP programs and Namrata Kumar, Research Associate.
