Zepto's Seoul Street: What it says about fandom marketing in India
Zepto has rebuilt a Korean street in Delhi for about 300 invited guests. A ramen brand paid to be the title sponsor, a soft drink ran a spice challenge, and creators carried the evening to everyone who wasn't there. Here is what the event says about fandom marketing, and how a brand without Zepto's reach can use the same idea.
What Zepto built
Seoul Street was an invite-only recreation of a Korean street, with food counters, games and brand booths, held in Delhi on or before 7 October.
Nongshim India was the title sponsor and let guests personalise their own cup noodles and ramyun bowls. Sprite ran a spice challenge, the noodle-kit brand Cheffin held a cook-off, and Gimi Gimi, McCain and WickedGüd each ran a booth. eventfaqs has the full list.
Zepto's chief brand officer, Chandan Mendiratta, calls the approach culture hacking: finding what people already love and building new ways for them to experience it. His brief for the event was short. "The fandom already exists. Can we make it bigger?"
Why Korean food was the right pick
Zepto did not have to guess what its customers love. Its own search data told it.
The public numbers point the same way, though they are a few years old. NielsenIQ measured the Korean noodle market in India at about ₹2 crore in 2021 and over ₹65 crore in 2023. Kantar found that the share of households buying Korean noodles rose from 2% in July 2020 to 5.7% in July 2023. A pack of imported ramen sells for ₹100 to ₹150, against ₹10 to ₹15 for a pack of masala noodles, so these buyers are paying a premium for the taste of a culture they follow on screen.
The large brands have already moved. Nestlé launched Maggi Korean noodles in November 2023. Knorr tied its Korean ramen to season 2 of Squid Game in December 2024. In May 2026 Mondelez announced Oreo cookies made with BTS, rolling out across more than 80 markets from June.
Those campaigns licensed a band or a show. Seoul Street used Korean food and street culture, which no one owns, so it needed no licence.
Why 300 guests can be enough
Fan conventions sell tickets to tens of thousands of people. Zepto invited a few hundred and relied on creators to reach everyone else.
The scale gap is large. Organisers say Anime India's first Mumbai edition, in August 2026, drew more than 45,000 fans, and Comic Con India's Delhi edition drew over 52,000 in 2025. Seoul Street's guest list was about 1 in 150 of the Mumbai crowd.
Zepto plans for that. It keeps these events to Delhi and Mumbai, where most of the creators it works with live, and it says it spends more on getting the event seen than on building it. The guests make the content, and everyone else watches it on Instagram.
It is a test, and Zepto treats it as one. The company has not shared what the event cost or what it returned for the sponsors. Mendiratta says that if it works, Zepto will look at other occasions and other fan communities.
Why a delivery app can host a party
Quick commerce apps sell products, sell ad space and, with events like this one, sell experiences to the same brands.
Advertising is now a large business for Zepto. Its ad revenue grew more than 151% to about ₹1,640 crore in FY26, and its IPO filing shows it earned more from advertising that year than it spent on its own.
For a sponsor like Nongshim, the event, the ad and the shelf sit in one app. A fan who saw the booth on a creator's reel can order the same ramen and have it in minutes.
How a smaller brand can use fandom marketing
You don't need a street set or a title sponsor. You need a fandom your buyers already belong to.
- Find the fandom in your own data.Look at what people search for on your website, the search terms in your Amazon reports, the comments on your posts and the accounts your customers follow. Zepto started from its search numbers.
- Pick a fandom that fits the product.A ramen brand at a K-food night needs no explanation. If you have to explain why your brand is there, you have picked the wrong fandom.
- Keep it small and in one city.A 50-person screening, a cook-off or a meetup is enough when the right people attend.
- Spend on creators before sets.Invite the people the fandom already follows and give them a reason to post. Their posts are how the event reaches people who weren't there.
- Give guests something to make.Every Seoul Street booth had an activity: personalise a bowl, take a spice challenge, enter a cook-off. People post what they made.
- Stay clear of other people's property.A band, a show or a character needs a licence from its owner. A cuisine, a genre or a street style does not.
- Decide what you will measure before the day.Creator posts and their reach, searches for your brand name in the weeks after, and sales in the city where you held it. Posts by fans and creators also shape what AI assistants say about a brand, which we cover in our guide to generative engine optimisation.
What we'll watch
Seoul Street is one event, and the useful questions come after it.
The first is whether Zepto repeats it with other fandoms. Anime is the obvious candidate: organisers say Anime India heads to Hyderabad on 14 and 15 November and expect more than 50,000 fans. The second is whether any sponsor reports sales, which would tell other brands what a seat at one of these events is worth.
A smaller brand does not need either answer to start. It needs a fandom its customers belong to. If you want help finding that fandom and planning around it, campaign strategy is part of what we do.
Questions people ask
What is fandom marketing?
Marketing aimed at an existing community of fans, of a show, a band, a sport or a cuisine, instead of at a demographic. The brand joins something people already care about, through sponsorships, licensed products, events or content made with creators from that community.
Do I need a licence for a K-pop or anime themed campaign?
Using a named band, show, character or logo needs permission from its owner, which is how Oreo's BTS cookies and Knorr's Squid Game campaign worked. A theme built on a cuisine, a genre or a street style uses no one's property. Check with a lawyer before you use any names.
How big does a fandom event need to be?
Big enough to run well and photograph well. Zepto invited about 300 people and relied on creators to reach everyone else. A 40 to 100 person event in one city can work if the creators the fandom follows attend and post about it.
How do I measure a fandom campaign?
Decide before the event. Track posts and reach from creators and guests, searches for your brand name in the weeks after, and sales in the city where you held it. Zepto has not published results for Seoul Street, so there is no public benchmark yet.
Sources
- afaqs, Zepto builds Seoul Street in Delhi to test what fandom can do offline, 20 October 2026
- eventfaqs, Zepto brings Korean pop culture to life with Seoul Street, 7 October 2026
- Indian Television, Zepto lands in Seoul Street; Anime India is up next, 21 October 2026
- Business Standard, FMCG companies likely to cash in on Korean noodles trend, January 2024
- The Core, Korean is the hottest trend in India's noodles market, May 2024
- Impact, Knorr teams up with Netflix's Squid Game S2 for K-culture campaign
- MediaNews4U, Oreo teams up with BTS for first global snacking collaboration, May 2026
- IMT Hyderabad, Zepto vs Blinkit vs Instamart case study
- Zerodha Daily Brief, A 10-minute parcel comes for Dalal Street