Three years ago, they devised an unusual concept to `sell India to the Indians' in the 50th year of independence. Today, Bharatbala and Kanika Meyr Bharat are expanding their target base to encompass the global village and market India worldwide.

In the process, this duo has replaced brand names like MRF, JK Tyres, Nestle, Pepsi and Colgate -- for which they once created ad commercials -- with one big idea called Vande Mataram. And last fortnight, their creation, Ekam Satyam -- an extension of the same series -- bowled over Michael Jackson, who gave it a special slot on his concert at Munich.

"My father was a freedom fighter and felt I should use my own creative space to do something for my country. I looked at his observation from an ad man's perspective and thought of the best possible vehicle to excite the whole nation and invoke our dormant pride," says Bala, who had already spent 10 years building his reputation as the automobile tyre ad specialist inChennai and Mumbai before he launched `Project India'.

Such was his dedication to this new mission, that he actually took sanyas from advertising and plunged headlong into packaging Vande Mataram, the album, six music videos and 250 one-minute films on India. "If you feel about something as passionately, you have to give it your whole. Even A R Rahman, who has a packed calendar, took six months off to work on the album," says Kanika, who started off as her husband's assistant and worked her way to editing and co-producing all of BharatBala Productions' films. In 1997, Vande Mataram won accolades at the Cannes and New York Film festivals bagging prizes in the `Best Campaign of the Year' category.

"We have used national property -- our landscape, history and heritage -- to bring back the magic and glory of the tricolour. Our aim was never to offend the traditionalists, and thankfully we weren't accused of abusing or misusing India. On our part, we applied even better standards of production that wedid for ad films," says Bala.

Vande Mataram's two-part series -- the second featuring Lata Mangeshkar -- created history of sorts, by being telecast on virtually every TV channel in the country. And in the process of filming these videos and short films, the duo travelled the length and breadth of India, covering nearly 60,000 km by road and built themselves a huge reputation. "Before Mr Vajpayee's bus trip to Lahore, the government approached us to create a song for the occasion.

And a couple of months ago, S P Hinduja, who is a close friend of Michael Jackson, approached us for an Indian act at his concert," says Bala. Ekam Satyam, Kanika's brainchild, was created in just 10 days with some help from Rahman, Shobhana, Raju Sundaram, Prabhu Deva and Manish Malhotra. "I chose Ekam Satyam as my theme because I wanted a universal concept and this Sanskrit term stands for the one universal truth," says Kanika.

She penned the lyrics herself, under the guidance of a Sanskrit scholar, recordedthe song and had Raju choreograph the act using hip-hop dancers from Germany!

Looking back, both acknowledge that Vande Mataram has surpassed their wildest expectations. But right now, there's no time to rest on past laurels for, there are millennium deadlines to be met for another `big idea'. "The higher you go, the greater the realisation that there's more to be done. We haven't achieved anything yet," says Bala.