MUMBAI: At 8 am on Friday, Republic Bharat aired Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first Lok Sabha election interview, which was given to Republic Media Network’s Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami. Causing ripples not only across the political spectrum but also making global headlines, the #ModiSpeaksToBharat interview set new records on traction, engagement and impressions on the digital space. 

Benchmarking news highs on digital media, the #ModiSpeaksToBharat interview recorded a whopping 2.6 Billion impressions on social media during its playout. Trending just 7 minutes into the first playout on Republic Bharat, the Prime Minister’s interview trended for more than 6 hours non-stop across the country. With 333 tweets per minute for the first 48 hours, the interview generated immediate virality on the digital space. 

The scale of engagement was unprecedented, with the interview recording a staggering 44.6M watch minutes across live and VOD assets. 

In terms of content, the interview had 35 major national headlines which became the focus of the political opposition within minutes of the first play out. With 29 political reactions across 10 political parties, the #ModiSpeaksToBharat interview quickly became the center-point of political discourse nationally. 

With the Prime Minister responding on various issues from national security to domestic economy, the #ModiSpeaksToBharat interview triggered strong engagement on digital media across 23 states and 1042 major cities across the country. The cities which recorded the deepest engagement were Lucknow, Kanpur, Ahmedabad, Patna, New Delhi, Mumbai,Jaipur, Pune,, Hyderabad, Surat, Varanasi, Indore,  Gurgaon, Bangalore and Kolkata. 

In fact, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tough message to Pakistan during the course of this interview led to a direct response from Imran Khan’s Pakistan Government within 24 hours of the playout on Republic Bharat. 

Prime Minister Modi’s responses to a wide array of questions ahead of the crucial vote spurred reactions beyond India’s borders. The #ModiSpeaksToBharat interview led to digital conversations in 21 countries across the globe, including audiences in the United States, United Kingdom, UAE, Singapore, Australia, Oman, Nepal, Canada and Pakistan. 

With 7 playouts of the Prime Minister’s interview on day 1 clubbed with an aggressive digital strategy, Republic Bharat  became the one-stop destination for audiences in this crucial 2019 election season.