India’s eyewear gold rush

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Editor's note: Few companies advertise on flyers anymore. A once thriving medium but now relegated to local restaurants, hair salon and broadband service providers, flyers couldn’t keep up with Google and Facebook. But ClearDekho loves flyers. A small eyewear startup based in Ghaziabad, a city in the state of Uttar Pradesh and part of the Delhi National Capital Region, it goes around town distributing flyers with enthusiasm. Nothing fancy, just plain vanilla announcements of its new shop selling cheap prescription glasses. It beckons its unsuspecting recipients to give its shop a try.  Some of ClearDekho’s advertising tactics can make you chuckle.  For brand ambassadors, this three-year-old company partners with local milkmen in Delhi NCR. They are told to wear ClearDekho glasses and introduce the company in households where they deliver milk every morning. In return, the milkmen earn a small commission. The company also sets up eye camps at the strangest of locations. Like a temple where it solicits the vast masses whose feeble eyes can see a god in all her splendour but struggle to read time from a wall clock. …