Garuda Rakshak: a drone named for a myth reunites children lost in a 663M-person Kumbh

In January 2025, the Purna Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj drew 663 million pilgrims — officially the largest gathering of human beings in history. For DSP Mutual Fund, an asset manager whose purpose line is 'Invest for Good', the festival was a problem a finance brand had no natural reason to touch: at that density, mobile networks don't slow down, they die — and past Kumbhs had seen more than a quarter of a million children separated from their families.

With Dentsu Creative India and drone partner Falco Robotics, DSP built Garuda Rakshak, named after Garuda, the divine bird that guards pilgrims in Hindu myth. The system ran entirely offline: children wore low-cost ID wristbands; parents tapped the band at a Lost & Found kiosk; a radio method from 1970s marine navigation, transmitting under 1 kilobyte of data, reached the wristband and returned its position; a drone flew at up to 80 km/h, hovered over the child and dropped a giant coloured marker. Rescue teams simply ran to the marker.

The result was measured in reunions: 78% of wristband-wearing children were traced in under five minutes and every one of them was brought back to their families. Judges noticed what DSP had done — the campaign took the INNOVA Grande, an Effective Lotus Gold and a Lotus Roots award at ADFEST 2026, and DSP Mutual Fund was named ADFEST 2026 Advertiser of the Year.

The transferable idea isn't the drone; it's choosing a technology because it fails differently. Where everyone assumed connectivity, the team assumed its absence and built around the oldest reliable signal. And the brand paid for the system itself, so 'Invest for Good' was something a parent in a crowd of millions could literally look up to.