Big companies offering incentives to employees to go out and cast their votes

NEW DELHI: India Inc is pulling out all stops to get its employees to vote in the world’s biggest election. While Flipkart is organising voter registration camps for staffers, Samsung is allowing employees days off to travel and vote, promising not to count those days as leave. Domino’s and Dunkin Donuts, both run by Jubilant FoodWorks, have authorised a day off for voting and Swiggy is running a ‘pledge to vote’ campaign for its delivery staff.

Walmart-owned Flipkart’s voter registration camps for employees and their family members are meant to facilitate not just first-time voters but also those seeking to shift registration to a different constituency. Korean giant Samsung’s move to not consider voting-related travel as leave is the first such initiative by the company, a spokesperson confirmed. And as for Swiggy, delivery partners who vote will win ‘Swiggy Smiles’ reward points as part of its #VoteKaroPhirSwiggyKaro campaign.

A large number of companies, including L&T, Mahindra & Mahindra, Infosys, Deloitte, Accenture, H&M and Titan, have given employees a day off to cast votes.


And some are using their brand reputation to encourage voting. BSE is sending texts urging employees to vote and is running a campaign on its social media handles while Amul is printing a ‘go and vote’ message on 3.5 crore packs of milk daily, for 10 days.

KFC has rolled out a ‘finger inkin good’ campaign playing on its original ‘finger lickin good’ slogan to encourage voting.

And of course, Google and Twitter, companies whose internet platforms host so much political campaigning and related controversies, are in the game too.

Twitter is running a #PowerOf18 campaign to encourage first-time voters. Google ran a doodle on the classic voting meme – the ink-marked index finger.