Bombay Times, Pride Circle, and FCB India launched Out & Proud @Work in 2023 to spotlight employment discrimination facing LGBTQ+ communities across India's
Bombay Times and FCB India Take LGBTQ+ Inclusion Into the Indian Workplace
Bombay Times, in collaboration with Pride Circle and FCB India, launched Out & Proud @Work on 13 March 2023 — a campaign using real inspirational stories to expose the employment discrimination faced by LGBTQ+ communities across India and make a direct case for fair and inclusive workplaces.
The campaign is the second edition of the broader Times Out & Proud platform, which Bombay Times first introduced following the Supreme Court of India's landmark September 2018 ruling decriminalising consensual homosexual conduct under Section 377. Where the original campaign, launched in May 2019, focused on visibility and social acceptance, Out & Proud @Work sharpens its lens onto a more specific and often neglected dimension of LGBTQ+ lives in India: economic participation and livelihood. The campaign argues that prejudice at and outside the workplace systematically marginalises the potential, qualifications, and personalities of LGBTQ+ individuals, leaving them underpaid, unnoticed, and unwanted within the formal economy.
In the Indian market, the timing was deliberate. As reported by Campaign Brief Asia, the campaign launched at the start of India's financial year rather than during Pride Month, a choice that frames workplace inclusion not as a seasonal gesture but as a year-round organisational responsibility. The initiative is amplified across print, television, and digital platforms, reflecting Bombay Times's position as a multi-channel media property within the Times of India Group. The campaign film is set in a company town hall and features Akshay Verma, Co-founder of Fitpass, illustrating through his own testimony how discrimination infiltrates professional environments. The partnership with Pride Circle is designed to bridge the gap between LGBTQ+ job seekers and employers willing to build more inclusive workforces, while also inviting participants beyond the community itself into an open dialogue on workplace equity. Clapboard Score: 70/100.
FCB India grounded the creative strategy in a specific and confronting idea: that denying someone a livelihood is a form of violence. Swati Bhattacharya, Creative Chairperson at FCB India, stated plainly that there is no form of violence more subversive than financial violence, and that there is an unbearably high incidence of it on the LGBTQ+ community in India, as documented by Campaign Brief Asia and The Drum. This framing elevated the campaign beyond conventional diversity messaging and positioned economic exclusion as a structural injustice requiring concrete corporate action rather than symbolic solidarity.
The strategic decision to partner with Pride Circle strengthened this position. Pride Circle operates as a dedicated platform connecting LGBTQ+ job seekers with inclusive employers in India, giving the campaign a functional layer that transforms media coverage into measurable workforce opportunity. The initiative explicitly sought to involve individuals outside the LGBTQ+ community, recognising that lasting workplace change requires the active participation of colleagues, managers, and organisational leadership — not only those directly affected.
In India's media landscape, this campaign occupies a distinct competitive space. Publications such as HT Media and digital platforms including ScoopWhoop have addressed LGBTQ+ representation in content, but the structured alliance between a legacy print brand, a specialist employment platform, and a major creative agency — directed at workplace policy rather than cultural visibility — represents a more operationally ambitious approach. According to Pwc In, India's entertainment and media market was valued at ₹3.8 trillion in 2023, with India's internet advertising market reaching ₹413.1 billion in the same year and growing at a reported 26.0% year-on-year rate. Within this expanding environment, purpose-driven campaigns that link editorial reach to employment outcomes occupy an increasingly credible strategic position for media brands seeking to demonstrate social as well as commercial relevance.
FCB India built the campaign's creative architecture around real human testimony rather than fictional dramatisation. The campaign film places authentic personal narrative at its centre, unfolding in the setting of a corporate town hall — a deliberate choice that situates the conversation about LGBTQ+ discrimination inside the very institutional environment the campaign seeks to change. The use of a familiar, recognisable workplace format grounds the emotional content in an environment that professional audiences immediately understand, reducing the psychological distance between viewer and subject matter.
Akshay Verma, Co-founder of Fitpass, appears in the campaign film as a real individual sharing testimony about how workplace bias operates in practice. His participation as a named, publicly identifiable figure rather than an actor or anonymous voice lends the film a documentary credibility that reinforces the campaign's commitment to honesty over performance. This approach aligns with the broader creative direction articulated by Swati Bhattacharya, Creative Chairperson at FCB India, who described the campaign as a call to action rather than merely a call for conversation, as quoted by The Drum and archived at Ads of the World.
The multi-platform distribution strategy — spanning print, television, and digital — reflects both the reach of Bombay Times as a media property and the campaign's ambition to penetrate audiences across different consumption habits. Print anchors the campaign in the credibility of the Times of India Group's editorial heritage. Digital and television extend its reach to younger professional audiences and to the broader organisational decision-makers the campaign must persuade. As reported by medianews4u.com, the campaign's launch generated trade coverage across multiple industry outlets in India, indicating that the creative and strategic framing resonated within professional marketing and media circles from the outset.
No verified performance data specific to the 2023 Out & Proud @Work campaign — including reach figures, engagement metrics, recruitment outcomes, or brand-tracking results — is publicly available at this time. No awards have been documented for this campaign in Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clio Awards, Webby Awards, or WARC databases.
The structural effectiveness of the campaign, however, rests on several compounding factors. Its predecessor, the 2019 Times Out & Proud campaign, generated 3.3 billion in earned media impressions, according to reporting archived at Campaigns of the World, and achieved a reported 2.6% increase in classifieds, as documented by Ads of the World — establishing a proven platform with demonstrable commercial and social reach before the second edition launched. The 2019 campaign also attracted what Brandinginasia.com characterised as global recognition, though no specific award category, level, or year has been independently verified.
The 2023 campaign's decision to launch at the start of India's financial year, rather than during Pride Month, is structurally significant. It signals to employers that inclusion is an operational priority rather than a seasonal communication exercise, which positions Bombay Times as a credible convener of workplace policy conversations rather than a brand capitalising on a cultural moment. The involvement of Pride Circle as an active employment connector rather than a nominal partner adds functional accountability to the platform's stated objectives. As reported by Campaign Brief Asia, the campaign cited the statistic that a substantial proportion of LGBTQ+ employees in India still feel unaccepted by employers, providing an evidence base that grounds its argument in documented lived experience rather than aspiration alone.
Out & Proud @Work is a 2023 campaign by Bombay Times, FCB India, and Pride Circle targeting workplace discrimination against LGBTQ+ professionals in India. It uses real personal testimonies, including from Fitpass Co-founder Akshay Verma, distributed across print, television, and digital platforms to advocate for fair and inclusive workplaces across India.
The original Times Out & Proud campaign launched in May 2019 and focused on LGBTQ+ visibility and social acceptance in India. Out & Proud @Work shifts the focus specifically to employment discrimination, livelihood exclusion, and organisational action, framing economic marginalisation as the defining challenge for LGBTQ+ communities in Indian workplaces today.
Bombay Times and FCB India deliberately launched Out & Proud @Work in March 2023, at the start of India's financial year, rather than during Pride Month. As reported by Campaign Brief Asia, this timing frames workplace inclusion as a year-round organisational responsibility rather than a seasonal communication gesture tied to a single cultural moment.
Pride Circle is an India-based platform that connects LGBTQ+ job seekers with inclusive employers. In the Out & Proud @Work campaign, Pride Circle bridges the gap between employment opportunity and community need, giving the initiative a functional workforce dimension that extends its impact beyond media coverage into tangible career outcomes for LGBTQ+ individuals in India.
Swati Bhattacharya, Creative Chairperson at FCB India, led the campaign's creative direction. She described employment exclusion as a form of financial violence and characterised Out & Proud @Work as a call to action, as quoted by The Drum and Campaign Brief Asia, positioning the work as a demand for corporate accountability rather than symbolic diversity acknowledgement.
No verified awards for Out & Proud @Work have been documented in Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clio Awards, Webby Awards, or WARC databases. Its predecessor, the 2019 Times Out & Proud campaign, was reported by Brandinginasia.com to have achieved global recognition, though no specific award category or year has been independently verified.
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