Zomato teams up with Paal Dabba for Chennai anthem Veppam is our Weapon

MUMBAI: In Chennai, even the heat has a beat and Zomato is turning up the volume. Zomato has teamed up with regional rap artist Paal Dabba for a Chennai-focused music video titled Veppam is our Weapon, using the city’s heat, food and local culture as the raw material for a new brand anthem.

The track was announced in Chennai on August 21 and builds its narrative around something the city knows particularly well: heat. But rather than treating the weather as something to escape, the campaign uses it as a cultural shorthand for Chennai’s food, passions and everyday character.

The music video brings together local language, slang, references and familiar settings, with the creative treatment developed around elements that are recognisable to Chennai residents. The idea is to portray the city through a local lens rather than interpret it from the outside.

For Paal Dabba, that meant drawing directly from his own experience of the city and its language. He said the track’s references and slang come from what he grew up hearing on Chennai’s streets, describing the song as something that was already present in the city and which he simply put into words.

The collaboration also fits Zomato’s wider attempt to build campaigns around local cultural cues rather than treating regional markets as a one-size-fits-all audience.

Sahibjeet Singh Sawhney, Marketing Head, Zomato, said the campaign explores Chennai’s unusual relationship with heat whether it comes from the weather, its food or the passions of its people. The idea, he said, is that Chennai does not simply endure the heat but thrives on it.

With Paal Dabba’s rap providing the musical voice and Chennai supplying the subject matter, Veppam is our Weapon turns a familiar complaint into a cultural calling card proving that when the city turns up the temperature, it can also turn up the rhythm.