As super fast trains roll out of stations, smartly dressed young men, occasionally women as well, swing into action.
They unpack the covers and arrange the brochures and forms in order.

The youngsters virtually brace themselves up to jostle with other vendors, but in a different manner. Their target audience is different and they know it well.

With a smile, they distribute a crossword form and a couple of brochures and promise to return to you in about 15 minutes. The form says that the right answers carry rewards, but only for a few.

This is not one of those advertisements often taking readers for a ride. The youngsters here are selling insurance to passengers in a train.

With the insurance sector opening up, many players are now entering the field. Marketing has become aggressive and intense.

As insurance is almost synonymous with the Life Insurance Corporation of India, two-and-a-half-years-old HDFC Standard Life Insurance Company Limited is trying hard to have its share in the market through this novel method of wooing passengers.

HDFC Standard Life Insurance is a joint venture between HDFC, India's leading housing finance institution and Standrad Life Assurance Company, Europe's largest mutual life company.

HDFC managed Rs 21,450 crore (Rs 214.5 billion) in assets and Standard Life managed $121 billion in assets.

Back in the train, the passengers pull out their pens or seek one from co-passengers. Immediately, they start brooding over the questions. Some start scratching their heads. A few are willing to lend a helping hand also to answer eight questions mostly related to insurance.

The questions include cheapest form of life insurance, savings and add-on benefit from life insurance. Without a question on the company, the crossword will be incomplete and defeat the purpose. One clue for the 25-letter word is, ''the first private life insurance company to be given a licence''.

Once the form is returned, they wait impatiently, frequently looking at the movement in the aisle with the fond hope that they could be among the lucky. Some even call the company representatives for more details on the policies.

''The response has been good. It helps us to build a data base. Our representatives will clarify the doubts on the spot, if the passengers are interested,'' a company representative told UNI on Lal Bagh Express from Bangalore to Chennai.

Such an exercise is taken up on most of the super fast day trains originating from major centres. The response in Shatabdi was excellent as ''only class people'' travel in them. Others are okay, he added.

He said the company spent about Rs 1.5 lakh (Rs 150,000) for a 21-day campaign on Lal Bagh Express a month, which included fee paid to the Railways for the campaign. ''Still it is worth it. It is better than giving advertisements in media,'' he observed.

The company will carry out the campaign for three months up to March.

B R Manjunath, certified financial consultant of the company, said generally 25 per cent favourable response would be there on each trip and they would follow it up. ''Our aim is to create an awareness on the need to insure, not just to save tax. We will advise people on how to save,'' he added. ''We want to explode the myth that insurance is one of the ways of saving on tax. We want to tell them how important insurance is and how money could be saved in a meaningful manner,'' the young consultant insisted.

Shobha D Metri, another certified financial consultant, on her maiden trip, said the experience was thrilling. A final year B Com student in a Bangalore college said she could earn money and hence took up the job. The consultants are assisted by about three people hired from a consultancy firm.

UNI