RBI floats tender for Rs 12-crore social media management mandate

The three-year contract will cover digital campaigns, podcast production, misinformation tracking and real-time response management

by Tasmayee Laha Roy
Published: Oct 28, 2026 8:30 AM | 2 min read

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued a Rs 12-crore tender for social media management, seeking an agency to manage digital communications, content production, and public engagement over a three-year period from April 2027 to March 2030.
The mandate includes developing multilingual monitoring systems for misinformation and public sentiment, requiring 24/7 social listening across various platforms and news sources, with alerts for harmful content in at least 15 Indian languages.
The selected agency will also handle podcast production focused on financial literacy and regulatory clarity, and must provide rapid online response management, issuing predefined responses within five minutes of a post.
Agencies bidding for the contract must have an average annual turnover of at least Rs 70 crore, indicating a preference for larger, established firms in the competitive bidding process.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has floated a Rs 12-crore social media management tender, seeking an agency to handle its digital communications, online reputation, content production and public engagement over three years.

The mandate signals a broader shift in institutional communication, with the central bank looking beyond conventional social media management to build a multilingual, round-the-clock monitoring and response ecosystem capable of identifying misinformation, impersonation, scams and emerging public sentiment.

According to the Request for Proposal (RFP) issued by RBI's Department of Communication on October 7, the contract will run from April 1, 2027, to March 31, 2030, subject to annual performance reviews. The estimated value of the work is Rs 12 crore, with bids closing on November 6.

The selected agency will be responsible for developing platform-specific communication strategies, creating digital campaigns, managing social media content and executing promotional activities.

The scope also includes end-to-end podcast production, from conceptualisation and scripting to recording, editing, distribution and performance measurement. Podcasts will focus on financial literacy, public awareness, regulatory clarity and institutional messaging.

A significant component of the mandate is social listening. RBI wants 24x7 monitoring across platforms including X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube, alongside news websites, blogs, forums and messaging applications, wherever technically and legally feasible.

The monitoring system must cover at least 15 Indian vernacular languages, in addition to English and Hindi, and generate real-time alerts for potentially harmful content.

The RFP also calls for tools capable of sentiment analysis, detecting suspected impersonation accounts and integrating artificial intelligence.

One of the more demanding provisions concerns online response management. The agency must be equipped to issue first-level responses within five minutes of a post, provided the responses have been predefined and approved by RBI.

The central bank has also specified a requirement of a dedicated team of 15 professionals, exclusively assigned to its account, with the provision to expand staffing when required.

Participating agencies must have an average annual turnover of at least Rs 70 crore across FY2023-24, FY2024-25 and FY2025-26.

The financial and experience thresholds are likely to favour established, large-scale agency networks and integrated digital communications firms over smaller specialist agencies.

While the Rs 12 crore figure represents the estimated cost of work rather than a final contract award, the breadth of services sought highlight the growing complexity of social media mandates from public institutions.