Shrimoyee Sur and Chaarutha Arabind win the Adfcators PR FCF Scholarship

Adfactors PR and the Future Communicators Foundation (FCF) are proud to award Shrimoyee Sur and Chaarutha Arabind the Adfactors PR Future Communicators Foundation Scholarship at the School of Communications & Reputation (SCoRe). Thanks to the generous financial support of Adfactors PR, the full-tuition scholarship is awarded annually to two winning students of the Adfactors PR FCF Scholarship competition. This year, the top five applicants were invited to present their campaign brief in person at the Adfactors PR office in Mumbai, with the two winners chosen based on their 20 minute presentation.

The theme of the 2025 Scholarship was “Mumbai Reimagined: Dreams in Sustainable Motion.” With Mumbai facing severe infrastructure stress, students were tasked with creating a campaign brief that would build Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) into the city’s narrative, focusing on issues of sustainability, inclusiveness, and climate resilience. Students were required to develop a focus area (such as affordable housing, heritage preservation, or infrastructure), identify three Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure communications outcomes, and address stakeholder engagement from citizens, artists, and civil-society groups.

“We extend our heartiest congratulations to the 2025 FCF Scholarship winners. At Adfactors PR, we remain steadfast in our commitment to nurturing the next generation of communication leaders.,” says Adfactors PR Co-Founder and Managing Director, Madan Bahal. “Our enduring partnership with the Future Communicators Foundation and SCoRe is a testament to our belief in education as a driver of this positive change,” says Madan Bahal.

"We at SCoRe are grateful to Adfactors PR and the Future Communicators Foundation for integrating Environment, Society, and Governance (ESG) into an international scholarship rewarding our top students in public relations and communications,” says Hina Issar Huria, Programme Director, School of Communications and Reputation (SCoRe). “We are proud of our two deserving students, Shrimoyee Sur and Chaarutha Arabind, for applying experience-based approaches learned at SCoRe to this prestigious, merit-based scholarship,” says Hina Issar Huria.

“Shards from the Crown: Mumbai’s Vanishing Heritage” Proposing a multi-pronged campaign addressing heritage preservation in Mumbai, Shrimoyee Sur focused on initiatives identifying dangers to existing architecture, including flooding, waste dumping, gentrification and large-scale construction. Her campaign proposed to highlight the problem by creating “Shards from the Crown,” a 30 minute documentary on Mumbai’s vanishing heritage. With the slogan “No trash, only bones” (Kahra Nahi, Kal Hai), Sur’s campaign aimed to educate citizens on composting and waste segregation as a means to reduce damaging monsoon floods. A proposed second stage includes identifying real estate projects close to 120 waterlogging sites, advocating for public-private partnerships to build stormwater harvesting into infrastructure development. Her campaign also encourages Electric Vehicle (EV) buses in Mumbai, looking for ways to lessen the negative impacts of large-scale transportation projects on the city’s heritage buildings.

“I would like to thank Adfactors PR, the Future Communicators Foundation, and SCoRe for giving me the opportunity to confront the climate and infrastructure issues of Mumbai,” says Shrimoyee Sur. “Undertaking the Adfactors PR FCF Scholarship enlightened me to the environmental challenges of Mumbai, broadening my perception of affordable housing, heritage preservation, and building climate-resilience,” adds Sur. “I learned how sustainability can leverage empathy and enable impact measurement in terms of action, rather than just numbers. The Adfactors PR FCF Scholarship enabled me to self-reflect on my capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses, acting as a source of inspiration and encouragement as I pursue professional communications,” says Sur.

“City of Dreams, City of Change”

Noting that Mumbai ranks 141st in global liveability, Chaarutha Arabind’s campaign proposes citizen-led change through four unique outreach tactics. Reimagine Walls of Mumbai uses recent advances in carbon- capture paint to turn neglected city walls near heritage sites into pollution-eating murals, replete with QR codes to share heritage and sustainability stories. Switch for Mumbai imagines a gamified reporting website to encourage citizens to undertake green actions.

Partnerships for People & Planet turns to roundtables and student hackathons to crowdsource policy solutions, as well as partnerships with NGOs such as Green Yatra, Greenpeace, and local run clubs to integrate ESG into community events. And turning to stand-up comedy, Arabind proposes a ticketed Mumbai comedy event as a means to communicate Mumbai’s heritage, resilience, and heritage preservation while fundraising for green initiatives.

“The Adfactors PR FCF Scholarship challenged how I view sustainability, showing me that real impact comes from empathy as much as from measurement,” says Chaarutha Arabind. “Exploring the environmental impacts of AI made me realise how central both technology and sustainability are to the future of communications. As someone entering the field, understanding how these elements come together will definitely impact the kind of work I hope to do. The Adfactors PR FCF Scholarship has helped me recognise my strengths and direction with far more clarity,” she adds.