I thought… something in media has to be
something that is easy to say, catchy, short,
almost like an acronym. So I looked at my
name which is Trushar Khetia and I said
the first letters of my name are TR and the
last two letters of my surname are IA and
I thought TRIA has a very good ring to it
so the original idea came from these two
things as an acronym from my name.
However when we started looking into it
deeper we realized that this name has so
much significance because if you look at
where we started, TRANSIT MEDIA,
the first two letters of ‘Transit’ are TR and
last two letters of ‘Media’ are IA. And that
was a complete coincidence!
We use TRIA as an acronym to form
our values as well as our code of conduct
with our clients. ‘T’ stands for TRUST.
The fundamental thing that is required to
form a basis of any interaction with any
person when it comes to human beings is
TRUST. Once you build up the trust, you
earn the trust then you are able to move
forward. ‘R’ is for RELATIONSHIP
because once you trust me as a client I will
deliver for you, I will not let you down.
You now have a bond, we keep interacting,
we keep talking, we keep exchanging, now
that is the relationship.
Through our interactions with our clients,
we are able to brainstorm on new ideas,
give innovations and insights so the ‘I’
stands for INNOVATION and with
that we are able to provide innovations
to the clients which now brings us to
letter ‘A’. It is great to have trust, build
a relationship, come up with innovations
but if they are not put into action; if they
are not implemented then it all comes to
nothing. So the ‘A’ in our team represents
ACTION, execution, implementation!
That’s the deep meaning of our four letter
words!
What triggered you to come
back home and start Out
Of Home solutions?
The idea of doing Transit Media came
to me when I was still in university,
though I implemented it about seven
years later. The reason behind it was that
my primary form of transport was buses
in Manchester. In addition, in London
transit media was on another level mainly
driven by the underground tubes and the
over ground trains. CBS media was the
leader in the industry at that time. So, I
started researching and I realized they
only specialized in the transport sector
media, so they had everything from buses,
underground tubes, over ground trains to
railway advertisements all the way till bus
stops. During my holidays, I would travel
back home, and I could notice the traffic
levels increasing. I saw an opportunity and
I grabbed it. It’s not like we invented, it’s
not that we were the first ones to do it, no.
But we were the ones who stretched the
information.
Every sector we are in gives you a captive
audience, it means there is a reason why
those guys are there, they are either stuck
in traffic, waiting for a bus, traveling in the
bus, there is a car stuck behind a Matatu,
or they are in the shopping mall. We give
you a captive audience that you can engage.
In Kenya, out of home media currently is
still dominated by billboards and street
boards which to me is passive media, it
gives you a passive audience because the
moment you pass a billboard or a street
board it’s not going to follow you. But our
media is with you, you are stuck with it.
We offer end to end solutions in terms of