Nikhil Thakre — Mood Indigo, IIT Bombay

Awards & Recognition

7 metals across three national platforms — 3 of them Gold

The campaign, “India's Largest AR Graffiti,” picked up wins at the exchange4media NEONS OOH Awards, the exchange4media Indian Digital Marketing Awards (IDMA), and BW Businessworld's BW Merit Awards. Executed with Laqshya Media.

● Gold

e4m NEONS OOH Awards 2024

Best Interactive DOOH Campaign — “India's Largest AR Graffiti Campaign at IIT Bombay Mood Indigo.” 13th edition; celebrated alongside brands like Absolut, Taj Mahal and Tata.

Press release & context

● Gold

e4m IDMA 2024

Best Use of AR / VR — Indian Digital Marketing Awards, 15th edition. “India's largest AR graffiti,” IIT Bombay Mood Indigo × Laqshya Media Limited.

IDMA 2024 winners

Nikhil holding e4m award trophies at the ceremony

● Gold

BW Merit Awards

Tech-Enabled category — BW Marketing World (with BW Businessworld). Over 50 brands among winners; “India's largest AR graffiti” by IIT Bombay Mood Indigo.

BW Merits coverage

Nikhil with the full set of e4m NEONS metals — At the ceremony with the full set of e4m metals. NEONS alone accounted for multiple wins across the AR Graffiti and Art Therapy campaigns.

The tally

7 awards · 3 Gold

Split across the three platforms above: exchange4media NEONS (OOH), exchange4media IDMA (digital), and BW Businessworld. Between the AR Graffiti wall and the Art-Therapy activation.

e4m NEONS 2024 winners list

Note on verification: e4m publishes winners publicly, but a few sub-category pages are occasionally gated. The physical trophies (pictured, engraved with campaign, IIT Bombay Mood Indigo and Laqshya Media Limited) and the linked press coverage together authenticate the wins.

Media Coverage

Featured twice in Mid-Day (1.4M daily readers)

Both the Indigo Art Project (IAP) and the Street Art Project (SAP) were covered in Mid-Day's daily city dossiers, quoting me directly as Arts & Ambience Head.

Mid-Day clipping quoting Nikhil Thakre on the Indigo Art Project — **“Art meets tech on Powai campus”** — Mid-Day, Oct 9 2023. The Indigo Art Project “sees a footfall of over 1,50,000… three categories — wall painting, art installations and project motion,” shares **Nikhil Thakre, ambience head, Mood Indigo.**

Mid-Day clipping featuring Nikhil Thakre on the Street Art Project — **Street Art Project feature** — Mid-Day. Over nine international graffiti artists from Mexico, Italy, Australia and England joined in. “We hope to spread the possibility and expand its potential in India,” revealed **Nikhil Thakre (left), arts and ambience head, Mood Indigo.**

Full Mid-Day daily dossier page — The full Mid-Day “daily dossier” page (Monday, October 9 2023) carrying the “Art meets tech on Powai campus” feature.

Mumbai Diary: Wednesday Dossier

mid-day.com · scroll to the dossier entry

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Mumbai Diary: Monday Dossier

mid-day.com · scroll to the dossier entry

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A new shade of Indigo

mid-day.com · things-to-do feature

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Media promotion — image references

Google Photos · press promo stills

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The mentions of “IAP”, “SAP” and “Mood Indigo” sit in the body of these daily city roundups — Mid-Day doesn't expose paragraph anchors, so open each link and scroll to the dated dossier entry.

Project Motion · Technology × Art

Rebuilding the playbook from scratch for the 53rd edition

I had zero prior experience in this vertical, so I started “Project Motion,” the fest's first tech-fused art program, from scratch. Here's what it actually looked like on the ground.

Rewired Reality, the Mood Indigo art film by INVENTECH × @iitbmoodindigo. A one-minute look at the AR walls and installations.

3D Billboard · 1,600 sq ft AR wall

India's Largest AR Graffiti

A 1,600 sq ft graffiti wall that came alive through AR: point a phone at it and the mural moved. 1.5 lakh students interacted with it on campus, and it reached another 3M+ online.

Cutting-edge AR 1.5 lakh on-ground 3M+ digital reach Best Interactive DOOH — Gold

India's largest AR graffiti campaign infographic — Campaign board: the AR graffiti wall at Mood Indigo.

The AR wall in motion. Physical mural, rewired into a moving digital scene.

The Mood Indigo AR graffiti mural — The mural that anchored the AR experience.

Art therapy projection-mapping infographic — Art Therapy at Mood Indigo — mental-health wellness activation.

Projection-mapped art therapy

Art Therapy for student mental health

Sensor-driven, projection-mapped art that read human brainwaves to generate visuals and calm people down. Paired with anamorphic projection and workshops that got students actually talking about mental health. Reached 3M students, with 150,000+ interactions over five days.

Brainwave-driven visuals Projection mapping 150k+ interactions Mental-health first

The art-therapy installation running on ground — anamorphic projection responding to participants.

Street Art · Installations · Sensor art

The wider canvas

Beyond the AR wall, there was a lot more running in parallel: a Street Art Project with 9+ international graffiti artists (spray paint sponsored by Montana Colors), large-scale sculptural installations, sensor-based art like a piano staircase and glowing tiles, colour-theory immersions, and an in-house attempt at the Guinness World Record for the largest origami dragon.

Montana Colors 9+ international artists Piano staircase Glowing tiles Guinness attempt

Street Art Project — graffiti artists painting a car — Street Art Project — international artists at work.

Large-scale art installation with the team — A large-scale Indigo Art Project installation — with the crew who built it.

The scale it all sat inside — the Mood Indigo main stage.

Leadership & Felicitation

Institute Organizational Color — IIT Bombay

Institute Organisational Color 2023 award — Nikhil Thakre, IIT Bombay — Institute Organisational Color 2023 — awarded to Nikhil Thakre by IIT Bombay.

I led 200+ volunteers and artists over nine months, meeting 3,000+ business heads and artists (international, national, local) to bring in sponsorships, build the festival infrastructure, and get the tech-fused activations off the ground. For that, IIT Bombay's Dean of Student Affairs office felicitated me with the Institute Organizational Color.

Dean SA Office · IIT Bombay 3,000+ business heads engaged Arts & Ambience Head

Links for verification