The Juice is Worth the Squeeze feat. Shradha Agarwal (Global CEO, GRAPES)

Welcome to the 18th episode of the Indian Ad Geek, my name is Vishal Mahara and this episode is coming to you live from the pristine AQI land of Phuket. Today, we are getting into the juice of the industry that truly, in a world of corporate giants and holding companies, our guest today decided to grow something of her own. Boy, did it ripen. She is the co-founder and global CEO of Grapes, a woman who's been navigating the digital vineyards since before most of us knew what a hashtag was. She's gone from building an independent powerhouse to leading a global charge all while keeping her feet firmly on the ground and her eyes on the CTRs. Please welcome the woman who proves that in Indian advertising, you definitely don't want to have SAR grapes. The brilliant Shraddha Garwal. Welcome to the Indian Ad Geek. Hey Vishal, how are you doing? Tell me how you and advertising happened, Shraddha. It was a very young story. So I think I was one of those jokes on American Crankdown 3 deers, right? First of all, if we do engineering, if we do MBA, then why do we do MBA? Engineering, right? So I think it was a typical bad charm that time when we were young, that you have to go for your engineering and then you have to go for your MBA and that's what happened to me. I was basically finished my computer engineering and then I appeared for cat and then I appeared for Micah exams and then Micah happened and everybody was like, it's a great college. Nobody knew what you want to do. You just wanted to get into a great college. So that's how advertising happened to me. I think you joined grapes about 14, 13 years back? Yes. Yes. And so in during this time, how has grapes business model evolved since founding and what revenue streams are now driving most growth for you? Yeah. So I think as grapes, we were worldwide quite a lot. We started. We were actually a grapes software in 2009, which was basically we were a tech company who was doing website apps SEO at best. I joined them in 2013 right after my marriage and I was sold websites for a year, almost right to a lot of clients and then I just got bored. I was like, dude, I can't keep selling website because I came from a good marketing background and I wanted to do more. So I recommended that we start grapes digital. And but I got pregnant that time. So when I joined back in 2014, I started grapes digital in and we, you know, commercialized the whole communication by 2015 January. Now the big challenge came out to be who's going to come and work with you, right? So basically, I reached out to a lot of my ex-next world network connections, etc. And I spoke to them and I said, just get me in the room. I'm not asking you to give me the business. I'm just asking to get me in the room and listen to me once. And luckily, everything fell in place. We got home shop 18, we got pepper tap, we got Volvo eyeshirt, we got Martha Suzuki Nexa. And then I think during the course of Martha Suzuki Nexa, I remember very clearly was a big pivot for us because we were actually making their website when Martha Suzuki Nexa was launching back in 2015, right? So we were the first brand. We were the first partner for them who actually launched a auto website, which could take payments for car as your first, you know, download payment, which is not feasible because in the auto industry, you have to take payments at a dealer level. You can't take payments at a central level, even if it is as small as 10,000 rupees as a down payment, right? So we actually created 250 payment gateways, which is basically depending on the dealer that you are choosing from where you want to get the car, the payment will go to them directly. That project went so successful that they were so open to us as a partner to experiment more. But instead of coming to us directly and saying that why don't you, you know, work for us or other platforms or other digital facets, they asked us for vendors. Do you know someone because they they trusted our recommendation, right? Do you know someone who can do social media for us? Do you know someone who can do media planning and buying? And I was like, and really, but you're a tech company, right? And I was like, don't worry. So I literally, I said, again, just put me in the room, you don't have to give me business, listen to me once. And then we pivoted ourselves from just being a social media agent from a software agency to a social media agency. Then we got the business for media planning and buying and influencer marketing. So 2015 was really a big pivot. We became a full-fledged digital marketing agency right from social media to media planning and buying to websites and influencer marketing. So that was great for us, right? Then pandemic happened. And we were all vella to the core, right? But I think as digital agencies, nobody was letting us sit because nothing else was working in the marketing world. So all the eyes were us on us, right? Every client, every CMO was like, we can't do anything anywhere else. Let's do something on digital, right? So that is where we were literally slogging ourselves and working and everything. And I was like, you know, what it is not and they started opening up us to digital agencies saying that, you know, what these guys can also think, they can bring in a brand idea, they can bring in a campaign idea. And that made me think here, why are we always dependent on an offline agency to bring in the master idea or the main campaign? We can also suggest great ideas. And that's where our business model again once changed from being a digital agency to a integrated communication agency. So that happened to us in 2021. And I basically had a lot of people from the offline world to actually accelerate the growth that we had. And then the pivot for us happened in 2024. There were two big major things that happened with us. One, we started our business off-shows, right? So we opened our London office, we opened our Dubai office and we realized that it's always good to earn in another currency. Yeah. And the second thing that happened was AI, while everybody keeps saying that, you know, what we are getting overwhelmed with AI or there's a lot of job replacements that will happen with AI, but I'm telling you, it's a boon to the communication agencies and the market itself. The speed, the quality, the efficacy at which we are working is insane. So at Graves, we created a couple of orchestrated agentic agents, AI agents, which are now helping us in terms of doing jobs at a faster speed and a much better quality in efficacy. So now we've become a full powered AI enabled agency and that's our latest business model. So we've also created a AI tool, which is an orchestrated social agent in Dubai as one of our core markets and that is what is the latest business model for us now. What revenue streams now drive the most growth for you? So creative is my maximum revenue stream, which is basically approximately 55%, then another 15% is coming in from media planning and buying and then I have three more verticals, which is tech, S-U-N-P-R, which is driving approximately 10 to 12% each. So in recent years, you have launched Graves Storyteller Studio. You have launched Graves Imagine, which I think is the AI studio. You have Graves AI Commerce Lab. Plus Graves were in our room. What was the strategic thinking behind creating these subventures instead of integrating them into the core agency structure? How do clients benefit from this modular approach? So what happens? No, it was basically becoming a two-pronged approach. One is a client wants to go to a specialist. He wants to constantly look forward to a newer thing that he can integrate in his system and when he goes to a generalist, he does not believe in that system. Second, within the ecosystem, when you tell a employee who's joined, you're supposed to do client servicing today. Tomorrow, you're supposed to do media planning. They have to go for production. Next day, you have to find an influencer. He's so confused with his CRA that and he starts resisting adopting to new things. So we had to open specialized department within the system, who is generally faster in terms of producing and can talk to the client as an expert. So all these departments are actually a part of the same world of communication but their specialized department to cater to your need. For example, if you want production work, like if you look at social media today, what you and me are doing today on this call is content creation. We are not writing an article, right? Because we generally believe that people will watch video more and hence it is more important for us to create content and that's where the studio came in. Even in terms of influencers, right? We all knew that you are not going to believe the Shah Rukhan ad that I'm going to create once. You're going to breathe 100 influencers that I'm going to get. So hence the influencer lab. And layering all of them with AI now is becoming a big piece for us. So imagine if you like, for example, if you've seen the latest campaign that we've done for Manfors condoms, we've got the India's first brand ambassador who's an AI brand ambassador called Maira, right? We literally placed her in between real people and you could not guess till we announced it. So those kind of projects, even doing UGC projects for which so many of tools are now famous, we have our own in-house tool also, which helps us in terms of creating such ambassadors to a precision, which is at a thousand realistic nodes, which is not there with other tools that you see in the market today, right? So all this is accelerating the job of a client because you're spending approximately 70 to 80% of your spends on social media today, whether it is to do with content creation, media planning and buying influencers, anything it's going on social. So hence these studios made a lot of sense. Grape says transition from digital first to an integrated brand partner with the expansion into the UK and Dubai. What have you learned about the difference between integrated marketing in a mature Western market? Let's say like the UK versus the fragmented India/Bharad landscape. So Dubai in fact is two steps behind. They're not experimentative at all, still date. UK is a very, very mature market. India will take some time to reach that, right? So UK is a very thorough market with respect to a brand positioning space. Why do I exist? How am I different from the market? Why does the category exist? They will ask so many questions before launching a product. It's not funny and they will ensure that they have given you enough and more time to launch that product, right? Well researched, well packaged, well communicated product. India, while they will do the research, but there's a lot of gut feeling also. Second, they don't have time to do anything. Like even I'm telling you, a very, very large automobile brand gave us three months to launch a new brand, right? It's not funny. They think everything should have been done yesterday. They'll take three months to sign the contract and then they'll give you three months to launch the product. But Dubai, while they keep launching a lot of products but they're not ready for experimentation, you'll not see like a great emotional campaign or a you know a tech-based campaign in Dubai. Dubai is very flashy, big bold advertising on big billboards. You're done. And it's a very, very relationship market. You are there. You can drive business. If you're not there, you can't drive business. What prompted the expansion into the UK? Why was it important for you Shadha? So honestly, one of our clients was working at Amazon Prime UK called Sini. While we were working with her, she trusted the work with us so much that she wanted to give us more business from her other colleagues and everything. And then when he started that, she was like, you know, why don't you create an exclusive dedicated team for us that can help us to beat us the work, etc, etc. And then that's where we said, why don't we start a business in UK itself? And I asked her to join us. And now she's a CEO. So that's how UK happened. And then Dubai was. And then once you taste international currency, then expansion is obvious, right? So we looked forward to UA market. We're also looking forward to USA market now as the third step. Great. Best wishes for that Shadha. How do you balance grapes expansion with maintaining profitability and margins in an industry where consolidation is creating massive pricing pressures? I think everybody learns the hard way. You need to, you need to be very, very thorough with your PNL, right? So I think a lot of, and I'm telling you from a perspective where I've seen so many CEO books, right? The books are all over the place. You have no clue which expense center and which revenue center are matched together. You look at it from an overall perspective. So when you start matching, okay, this is your revenue center and this is the expense center to it. You will, and you review it almost every month, if not weekly, you'll be able to have a very strong hold on your nose. And you'll be able to understand that whether this particular market is making sense for us or not, then you can have an experiment budget. So you say that, okay, if I'm looking forward to a 20% margin, I'm going to have a 7 to 8% investment or experiment budget because the new market for me or a new vertical for me, right? And then you evaluate very strongly that budget that you've spent, whether it is adding additional revenue or not, either bottom line or top line, right? So we did this. We actually hired a very expensive resource in UK, I mean, the cost of a CEO here in India is a cost of a senior business manager, right? It's insane. We took that punt in very early days of a UK market launch and he made more money than he made. So we literally, but we tried it. We experimented it. We kept a very strong eye on it because you wanted to understand whether this will work enough or not. Experimented for six months, took three months to close that, which was insane. But yes, that is how you basically can ensure that you manage your P&L strongly. And P&L is very different from cash flow. So you need to ensure that as well. Right. Walk me through your most successful pitch in the last 18 months or differentiated it and how did you price it? One of the successful pitches is an automobile brand that we just got on board. We basically pitched for it for a year. One year we kept pitching for it. It started with a intro where they wanted us to pitch for a particular, so what happens is they're, they give you a brief, a sample brief, right? And within that sample brief, you can basically look forward to saying, okay, if this is your objective or business problem or brand problem, this is what the solution I can offer. So you take the entire pitch in two parts. First is a creative pitch. So that is, they can, because everybody gets hooked to creative, right? If you just throw them strategy, if you just throw them numbers, then you become a performance agency. So we give a good 50 to 60% of our deck as a creative pitch, okay? Then we actually divide the rest 40% in two parts. 15% goes on strategy. Why do we think that your brand should be positioned like this versus others? And the rest 25% is basically what to do with GTM. You will not see agencies in the market today who will go to a client with a GTM strategy because they generally want to just sell one piece. I'm a performance agency. I wanted to sell performance. I'm a social agency. I wanted to sell social. I'm a CRM agency. I sell you CRM, right? Nobody will stand and say, guys, look at this. There are 47 different platforms where you can advertise today, but why do you need to go on a 47 platform? I have fought with my clients in a pitch where I said, you don't need to be on six social media platforms. Why do you need a YouTube channel along with us Instagram channel and a Facebook channel, which makes no sense? And even if you're doing it, it's re-bubbly. One client literally fought with me. Can you add Twitter to it? I said, who is watching your content on Twitter? First, you need to know that it is X. Secondly, you need to know there are only bureaucrats, politicians and entrepreneurs on Twitter out of habit and announcement because they can't make videos all the time. So they want to do text tweets, right? Why are you going to be on Twitter? So this is one of the biggest problems that people are facing. So we create a funnel called, which is very well known, which is a CPT funnel. And then we basically create a grapes for a primary framework, which is called as SPIC. Suspect, prospect, intent, content. So content is basically anybody who's your current customer. He's content with your product. He's going to buy a product again. They're going to be a repeat purchase. Intent is people who are going to look forward to buying your product today. So they're searching. Let's say two wheeler bike with X, YZ features, YZ price, etc. Prospect is somebody is reading content around that category. Okay. And suspect can be anyone who's watching a GC or a news channel and might buy your product in six months. Now if you can put this on column and your ACPP funnel on the rows and then create what platform can go in which cell. And now if you have 100 rupees, do you think I should spend it on a suspect or a prospect? I should definitely spend it on an internet content. Right. I would like you to repeat purchase. I would like you to buy a category that you're searching for now. Right. So we create a GTM strategy where we talk about what platform makes sense for you in what budget. And do you want to currently drive more sales with intent and content audience or push new users in the funnel. And if you want to push new users in the funnel, remember it will take more effort and money. And everything has a platform. That's the best part about digital. Depending on your brand, depending on your needs state of a consumer, depending on your objective, you have a platform to do that for yourself. So you don't need to go 200 pieces. And this is what always makes us win a pitch against other because your creative idea and my creative idea can be subjective today or tomorrow. My team food code something last night and made a better pitch tomorrow. They won't. You can't help a creative pitch all the time, but a strong GTM you'll never miss. Yeah, you're right. Do you focus more on demonstrating category expertise or creative firepower data insights or cultural fit? What is most important in pitch rooms according to you? And has that changed over the last, you know, two to four years? Earlier, people were a lot more happy to get you into a room because you have worked with a similar category. You understand the nuances, acronyms and of that category very well. I think now because of the clutter, you know, you're exposed to 6,000 ads in a day, like lower impressions somewhere or the other. So much clutter that if you follow the rules of the category, you can't break the clutter. So now if you look at it earlier and we have, we work with almost some 15 genres of 15 industries today, right? So when a client say, Oh, you're working with so many industries, so diverse, you guys are, how will you focus on my? You don't have a background in our industry so much. I said, if you want another agency who's a background in your brand, then only look for them for performance. Don't look for them in the mid funnel or the upper funnel because they'll not think out of the box. Right? And your performance will continue to only grow to your tap is open. The day you close your tap, it's all gone. Right? You need an agency who has no experience in your category because the amount of effort they'll put to learn your category and think out of the box will be different from a person who already knows your category. Absolutely. How do you structure retainers versus project work today and what negotiation tactics work in the market for you? So, retainers, I would recommend any agency starting business to always have a size of a retainer business, which is equivalent to their salaries and their seat cost. And seat cost is not rent and internet. It is everything. Your supports fee, your management fees, etc etc etc. Right? So, we only divide cost into two parts. One is your salary, second is your seat cost. So, retainers should be equivalent to that. So, then you are covered. Any project that you buy or get on top of it is basically your out and out profit. Okay? We prefer having at least 65 to 70% as our retainers and 30% can be my ad hoc business. In a retainer business, we don't negotiate very hard because they come at a fixed team size and we know they will be only Y percentage of profit that we'll make in a retainer business. Right? Profit business, sorry, project business or ad hoc business, you can still negotiate and go below the line. Why? Because then you know that you are going to use the same employees to deliver that project. You are not incurring a new cost. It's like seat khalejari in our airplane, burdo, kuch extrai ai ga na. So, that is where you should not lose projects until it's going to harm your reputation of a cost perception that you're going to face in a future. If that is taken care of then you're home. Before we move on, just a quick reminder to the 90% of you who listen to the show, but do not subscribe to it yet. Please do press the follow, subscribe button, wherever you're listening to this, back to the conversation with Trada now. Trada, as we see the rise of retail media networks, how is grapes helping brands reclaim their relationship with the first party data? Is a role of the agency in 2026 more about media buying or is it more about data resolution? Okay, so I'm sure if you've read these reports which says the life of a CMO has reduced to literally 18 months, right? And everybody, so many people in the organization are now doing CMO's job. So, the CIO can be a CMO, the CTO can be a CMO. Even I have seen in so many organizations, the CHRO is also doing the job of a CMO. Yeah. So, absolutely, yeah. It's becoming insane, right? Imagine a person who was supposed to only create ads and a great communication and a brand story. Now he's supposed to look into first party data. He's supposed to look into tech. He's supposed to look into consumer journeys. He's supposed to look into data analytics and power BI boards. He's also supposed to look into ensuring that the team is happy and we have cultural events in the company so that they don't have a bad attrition, right? He's also supposed to look into extra-curricular activities that he's doing in the company and then he's also looking forward to a launch a new product because he's got some insight because of social listening from net. So, it's insane, right? Your expectations from a CMO is so much that you've given him an impossible task to crack. Second, the problem is nobody has sat down and said, "Guys, let's make a three-year plan." Okay? Year one will crack these two things, year two will crack these two, three, year three. I know there are 100 things to do. We all know there are 500 things to do, right? Even any go for travel, we want to cover 500 spots, but can we cover all 500 spots? Yeah, and that hasn't happened Shadda probably because, like you were saying, the life expectancy of a CMO has reduced so drastically that nobody's thinking three years ahead. Everybody's thinking, you know, what can I do in the next quarter or maybe the next half-year or maximum the next year? Exactly. And none of them are also laying down in objectives. So, for example, I've said in boardroom meetings where you'll have a conversation all of a sudden, we'll have a sale. We'll have a sale, so all of a sudden we'll have a sale. And then in five minutes, I'll give you a viral idea. Now, I mean, focus on your sale, focus on your viral idea. There is absolutely, absolutely a kid's boardroom who is interested. What we need to realize is that if you, like I said, that's why our frameworks work so well. So, for example, one of the frameworks I created is caught for topical marketing, okay? Now, the amount of time, the marketing team, the CEO, the CMO, the digital team, the agency, the dealers and distributors would have spent on that Christmas creative to be sent on social media as well as WhatsApp from your brand would have been insane, right? Just all these intelligent CXOs ask them, what is the ROI they got out of this creative? They have no answer. They must have spent even on the part, the first thing that they must be giving feedback or change this in the Christmas creative. By Huggler, I'm saying, I mean, pension, what is the ROI that you're going to get on this? So, people are not thinking through the fact that I met one client who said, I want to, this is my topical list for the month. There were 18 creatives in the topical. He wants to wish Guru Nanak Day, he wants to wish independence, he wants to wish this, that I said, what are you getting out of this? Your page is looking like a newspaper to me who's wishing or a Archie's card to me, wishing everything. He was like, no, no, my dealer, one distributor told us that you've not sent me this credit. I said, put it on WhatsApp, then why is it on your social media? Nobody's ready to answer these questions and nobody's ready to take all these things one by one. So, if I tell your CMO or CX, so that, okay, if topical marketing is so important to you, can we sort this out for one month and a half? Right? And then move to the next task, no, add more people to it. Now, I'm going to put four or more people in this task, it's going to be a lot of speed. So, just put the mark on it first, just create a bit of work to make a little work. So, like I said in topical money, we created a framework called Kot, class ownership topical. So, what class does your topical belongs to? Is it a regional, international or a local event? So, like a Christmas is international, the valley will be local, basically national and then be who will be regional, okay? Now ownership, what do you want to do with this day? Do you want to say hi? Happy Diwali jee changalagha? Do you want to do a small talk where you want to create education about this? For example, Dabar Gulabri, if I'm picking up a festival like Garbha, I'm going to tell you how to use rose water to create back rubs, oscrubs, right or packs. And then conversation, which is not to do with your product usage, but your brand DNA. Should I say, I believe in Valentine's Day like a Dabar Gulabri will say that I believe in rose day because it is a teenager's region who is supposed to use it in their Fadi Dadi love days, right? And in Fadi Dadi love days, your love is so warm, you can't say it with words, hence say it with a rose. So, rose is a conversation for you. Any other regional festival where face packs and others from becoming important becomes a small talk for you. And any other day, you just want to say, great day, chocolate day, friendship day, it's just a say high post for you. Now put budgets to it. I will spend 10 lakh rupees to make a film which is emotional and I'll put promoted by 50 lakh rupees because 1 is to 5 KRH, 1 is to 3 KRH. So, it will all be in media, right? Then you say, okay, in small talks, I'm going to put so much budget and this is my media budget. So, creative and media, creative and media, then you come up with a total budget. Now say, I have spent 1 crores across the year on topical marketing. What did you get in return? Did you get better engagement? Did people started loving you better? Do you have a post-prese survey to it? Right? Has your brand score increased? Or you were doing offer-based creatives and has your sale increased because of these, you know, festivals? That's how you drive strategies. And doing this, do you think it's a one week job? No. But people don't put that kind of effort and don't have that kind of patience as a result of which things are collapsing and everybody's all over the place. So, is the role of the agency more about media buying or data resolution? So, I think the job of an agency should be strategy, data and then execution, right? Why? Because at the end of the day, if you look at it, an agency who's only working towards performance, right or execution will have no stay in the company. I will be there for a year and then the client will get bored because you're not able to think much. You're not able to create data's surety for me. You're not able to do strategy for me. And that's why if you look at it earlier, the relationship with agencies for 10, 10 years and now it's gone down to one one year, right? We all are constantly looking for a new client because they don't have patience and and we don't have strategy for them. So, if you want to live or stay for a longer run, then you need to think through first-party data solution strategy, expansion on retail networks. If you just want to have this year panel sorted, then whatever you want to do. How is grapes using generative AI and automation and ideation, production and media? And what Godrails do you guys apply? So, what we've done is, like I said, we've created our orchestrated AI tool, okay? So, how has AI moved in the journey? So, last year was all about regenerative AI, okay? You can create a lot of content, multibillion. Now, people have become smart in terms of what quality content can be created. This year, 2026 will be about agent ITKI, where you create small, small agents, you create small, small workflows and the agent will start doing small jobs for you. 2027 will be about orchestrated AI, okay? This is where you'll have 10 agents working together to solve one business problem. So, imagine like a social media work. You first go to a content strategist who makes content buckets, then you go to a copywriter who write ideas, then you go to a designer who makes the design, then you go to a social media expert who pushes it on the social media and schedule it and make the calendar and everything. Then you have an analytics team who evaluates data on it, then you have an influencer team who finds influences on the side and you have a media team who promotes it on media. Now, there are somewhere around 7-8 jobs within the social media chain itself. If I create agents for all of them, right? And put them in a pipeline so that they can exchange data with each other. With the human loop, you will solve 2027 problem today. That is what we started doing. So, we have 8 MVPs coming up out of which we've sorted three. So, we have a multimedia AI agent, agent ITKI agent, who you just tell them what kind of image, what kind of video do you want, what kind of content do you want, it will create that for you. And this is a mix of different subscription tools. You have put together and you have created this on your own. It created custom workflows. Okay. So, it's not just multiple different tools that we put. Yes, you are using either of the one models, which is basically two two with either Claude or Charge GPT or Gemini because they all have their different powers. So, if you're creating a small peck thing, I'll prefer Claude. If I'm doing English, then I'll prefer Charge GPT. But you've created a lot of custom design like you've created a lot of custom comfy UI workflows. Right. And what we're doing is, for example, if you take a, oh, it's a nano banana or a Hicks field, right. They basically work on one model. So, they'll take a creative, they'll change something on that creative input it for you. Yeah. Or they'll take the prompt and then they'll create something for you. We have created a workflow where they take one prompt, put somewhere, an output, then take another prompt on top of it, put something and then another prompt and then take it to the third output. So, the quality of my output is 3x better than the quality of output that you have. Right. Plus, we are training each of these custom comfy UI workflows on an individual brand. So, I have trained my model on your t-shirt, let's say. The quality, the fabric, the brand, the tonality. Now, imagine, let's say a chocolate brand who has 10 chocolates. And every chocolate in the end has that CGI effect of that chocolate being made and etc, etc. I've trained my brand, my workflows on that. So, this is where the clients are able to actually generate better quality work, better output at a faster and a cheaper price. Yeah. So, this is what we're trying to put together. So, 2020-6, we will be just working through creating multiple such agents and putting them together in an orchestrated format because 2020-7 will be not about agentetic, it will be all about orchestration. But so many agencies are trying to do with AI, that you're also doing with AI. You're trying to use agentic AI as well. You're trying to make your own agents, your own workflows, etc. Do you think it would lead to a lot of me to work, similar sort of work instead of relying on human ingenuity and human creativity? Or is there a layer of human creativity also that you're putting on top of everything that you're doing? Nothing can run without a human. If you want to, okay, let's understand this. We were all writing in notebooks once upon a time. Computer came, like my father and my mother-in-law both were in government jobs, okay. One was in a food corporation of India and one was in a bank. Computer got introduced, they were all given a choice to quit, take their pension and move home or learn and move forward. That time everybody and that was the entire emotional wave in the country that computers is eating away human jobs because somebody who was writing it in the notebook was one job and then he was giving it to his boss. But today, do we think like that? Computer has increased our productivity to another level, right? We are able to do so much more. It is not funny as an individual and let's be honest. The point is that as a human race, you have the choice to work and take more out of the same minute that you're spending every day, right? Time is the biggest money. That's not what happens. Everything will come back. Any tool that can bring you time back is a boon, right? So I am not asking you to work 100x more. I am saying finish your eight-hour job into ours and figure out what you want to do in the next six hours. You want to go play piano, you want to take a swim, you want to spend time with your family, you want to learn something new, you want to finish 4x people job more, your choice, right? All I'm telling you is get your life back and your life can mean different things for different people. I don't want to work life balance. I will work with those six hours more. You want to work life balance, go play a game. That is what AI is going to do, but it is not going to become a me too. So everybody needs to just accelerate their work using AI. And whoever is able to do it faster, better, will be ahead of the game and survival of the fittest. Yeah. And on time, Sharda, when you look at pitch cycles these days, you will probably see a brand calling for a pitch on LinkedIn and you'll have hundreds of agency pitching or let's say if it's a more traditional way of calling for a pitch and maybe there are five agencies now involved. And sometimes they would even give you four days to work and sometimes they would give you, I don't know, two, three weeks to work depending on how they work, right? My question is actually about time wastage and creative wastage that you were talking about right now. Do you think the industry should move towards a paid pitch model or do you think that's just not feasible because our industry, we don't really have a association of sorts or we don't have a trade body that speaks on our behalf and there's so many thousands of players, it's difficult. But what's your, yeah, you're thinking on this, yeah, I am telling you, as simple as that in a crude language. So it's not funny, right? Let's understand the simple concept of dal roti sabke gharmi arie hai. We are all working for that extra. Now when a pitch is called, right? Whether it is called on LinkedIn, whether it is called on one to one, we all want to grab that pie. So I used to earlier not go and write on the LinkedIn post. Okay, I was like, yeah, I'm gonna go there solo, I'm gonna go there and post, and I'm not going to do that at all. But the person who doesn't know where agency is calling it, he will do the case selection. Then my CEO suggested, no, I'm we are going to do it. You don't want to do it, don't do it. I'll do it. I said, your wish, your time, your call. I am not participating in this madness. The day you get a pitch and you think that pitch is worth it, tell me I'll come to the room, right? And it worked. We got one of the biggest clients from LinkedIn, okay? I'm not seeing that all our clients came from LinkedIn, but it did work. So now, so kismat bolo, usko mein net bolo, kaam to garta ayar. Okay, if we get one to one b pitch, to be there calling for 10 to 12 agencies for a pitch, because kawi kyaar aayar, wui valuwait kya say karya, for commercial kyaar aayar, usko 30% kama karana aayar, 3 agencies, kibish, kibish, misi, technical bidohi, rf, kyoga. So they will call some 8, 10 agencies for a pitch. Okay. Now, in either ways, you will have this kind of a thing, where you are batting against multiple agencies, which is also fair. But not having a paid pitch is a problem. Let's be honest, I spend two lakh rupees on a pitch, because that's the amount of people, yeah, their amount of people, time that goes on a pitch is not funny, okay? If I'm spending two lakhs on a pitch, I should be at least compensated for two lakhs, I'm not asking for profit, but give me that due respect. UK, US market they pay you for a pitch. A lot of them, I'm saying 100% of them, 60-70% of them do pay you for a bit. They pay you as low as 850 pounds, 700 pounds, but that's also okay. Now, because it's a money that's going out of your pocket, let's say 800 pounds also per pitch, right? You will not take more than 5-6, which is that means you'll put some effort in terms of scrolling through the proposals or through the credentials of that agency and then choose your best bet. So I think that is something that should definitely, definitely come in our country, because we are all hungry for business, but the agency, the client should respect everybody's time and money. The second biggest pitch, ding, is calling pitch for fun or giving them the wrong time lines. I have seen agent clients, we'll take you three rounds of pitches, we'll be like, oh, your pitch is so big, you have changed this. You add this in and add it. I had so many rounds, I think, do you realize pitch is only to judge my capability, not to give you the whole business plan? You will have 10 agencies pitching, you'll take the 10 strategy and business plan, put one one idea each from one of them, have a in-house team executed, what have you done? And we like hungry agencies, we've all gone and pitched with the best ideas possible, with the best resources, ncd gam kar raga our pitch pay, right? So what we are not realizing is that we are, we are giving need to crocodiles, they are not going to appreciate what we bring on table unnecessarily. So I do a very calculated way of pitching, where we basically pitch only strategies or we sometimes let's say it's a positioning pitch. I will say, I don't know how to do a positioning pitch, if I can't sit with your brand, understand your consumer, do a survey, what will I pitch you in a positioning exercise? And look at my credentials, you know, yeah, if you genuinely feel I have good quality work, I can sit down and I'll do it. So we take a lot of calls, they can be gut feeling, they can be calculated feeling, we also ask for regeneration up front now shamelessly. Tell us what's your retainer, like yesterday one client called me and they said, we want a pitch, I said, you realize that everybody is going on a leave. He was like, yeah, we are going on leave, we come back, we want to see a pitch. I said, Cidistic pleasure man, balls to you, you want to go and enjoy your holidays, but you want agency guys to work for you during the holidays, right? This should be a low period for us also, right? We are any wishful slogging, way more than you are slogging. Because you have to give us feedback on whatsapp, we have to do a feedback on our feedback, right? So they don't realize all that. So I literally said, I am not pitching, period, you want your pitch and you know what, once you realize that you can put your foot down and say, we are not pitching, we will come to you back on 21st or I say a lot of time, I will take 3 days, 3 weeks minimum to pitch. 1st week is a strategy team, 2nd week is a creative team, 3rd week is a team called a design team, 3 weeks minimum to make a deck. What is your expectation? Yeah, we don't get that often do we? We put our foot down a lot of times, we say we are nothing doing and we are not dying. So often, after an emergency pitch of thoughts, you will see a 2 week run. So you are absolutely right. I was also reading Shadda that you made once a call to walk away from a mandate with Maruti because the budget did not allow for high funnel work you believed in. Now we were just talking about pitching and so much of pitching is procurement lead, right? How do you teach your BD teams the power of no? That's what I'm interested to know about. So I am a very firm believer of systems and enabling your team with the right processes and tools. So we have created like Ahoax Manu proprietary framework in communication for our clients, we've created in-house tools which helps you in terms of calculations. So we have master formats. So for example, let's say, I will tell them this is my calculation of a seat cost. This is my calculation of a employee cost. This is the bare minimum employees you need to run a funnel like this or a retainer like this. So now he has a play already from 15 to 25 and he knows where to say no. He can't come to me with a proposal which goes below 15 percent because like I keep telling you, Dalroti's coming in your life match. Dalroti is Harry. So now you should not do business where it is just going to drive unnecessarily drama in your life. So that's how we've done our whole business and they have the power to say no and sometimes though my team and the second big power that I've given them apart from revenue is respect. I keep telling them, you know what, if you've made a mistake, bow your fucking head down and come stand next to me, I will save you. You murder someone and come and tell me the truth, I will figure out how to save you. But if you're lying and covering your ass, I am not there for you. The second piece, if any time in a meeting your client's spark throws you under the bus in front of their senior management, he's not a team player. Be wary of those clients because you can stand for that client at 2am in the midnight for his appraisal but when he is bugged and he get throws you under the bus, that means he's not a team player and move out of that relationship as soon as possible. We learned that the hard way and we realized that we have so many good clients also in the industry who has stood by us. I remember in Maruti there was my digital spark, Charandeer Sanh, who's now in Facebook. She gave me a timeline to present like 24 hours. I said fire, can you do it like that? Where are you? Right? And she said, now you can't do anything. And ma'apay was in a position where my PPD didn't. And then I remember after that whole day when we were working and I had a very bad back also but still we worked through the night, four a.m. the Khatam Kiyam Neh or Nobri Jaya Kiyam Neh meeting. She was, she had a small kid one year old. The husband, the kid and she was in my office working on that PPD together. Right? That is what is called as relationship. Where you are in it together. Right? But client who makes a mistake and as soon as the boss shouts at you and they say, yeah, this agency would do it. They would fire it. So why did you get a PPD? So this is the power of no on revenue because you're not here for Chanda, you're not here for charity, you have to make money, you have to feed your family. And when I walk into office, I don't feel like I have to make a new award today. I have the pressure of feeding 250 families. I know that if I fuck up anywhere in terms of revenue, I will not do right appraisal and I will not be able to feed 250 families. Continuing with that, what KPAS do you prioritize when you're evaluating new business opportunities? Is it revenue, margin? Is it lifetime client value? Something else? I don't think with anybody looking for lifetime client value nowadays. TKY because there's no loyalty left. We don't want to stay with the same boy, forget same client. Right? So and the clients are also not looking for to stay with you for the sale. Like I met a old client who we work for two years. That client is a big MNC. Never got a award in their life. We make them win like some 50, 60 awards in two years. And then they look forward to changing the nation. The male that we got was like if it is bored, we just want to see a newer perspective. And I'm not denying there must be errors from our side sometimes. You get irritated, it takes a lot of time, you won't be able to reach any new idea. But overall, you've done a lot of good work in the past two years. You've got so many campaigns, you've got so many businesses, you've got your concentration. And then after two years, he met me at a panel discussion and he was like, it's a good idea. You know how we are, you've got to work with me. So loyalty is going to zero and I don't believe in a lifetime value of a client. So what I believe is very clearly, if a retainer is, so one year in a year, what will be the bottom line of the retainer value? And how much will the top line of the ad hoc value be? Second thing that I want to understand, does he has appetite to experiment for awards? If a award is appetite, then I want to work even less. Every week there is a new award function, new media house is getting into all of this. Have you seen any positive impact from awards on your business, on acquiring new businesses on your NBD efforts? A two facets to it, okay. One, I never pay for an award. Okay, I might have done it 10 years back for my third, fourth award because I didn't use the game. But if as an agency, I choose, I will never pay for an award. I will submit multiple entries. I can go up to 20 entries in a particular award. If I know that the campaign is worth it, right? But I will not pay for an award. The second piece is, you need to qualify which award makes sense. So there are 100 media houses, but only a few media houses have the right quality of award that you can drive in. Right? So you choose that very categorically and you know that these people have a better media reach. Third, don't have, don't try and win 30 awards in a campaign. You know, when you have the same agency going again and again on the stage for another award, you know that it is, it is overwhelming. Right? So you will have so many entries in which you win 50, okay? And you will then be around as the network agency of the year. I mean, it makes no sense to me. So if you have the right award qualification, it means you have DNA, Abhi, there are rumors about Abhi also. But there is also some generality about it, right? E4M, I love E4M awards. And there are also small media houses which are very good, right? You can choose to put the right award and then your concise is clear. You have not given the money, but if you see the award coming up and your strategy is coming up, it is fine. I mean, I am not judging you, but your choice and it does bring you clients. I have seen this. All right. Which advertiser categories are you betting on for this year and the coming year? Are you seeing accelerated spend from automotive, from BFSI, from e-commerce, or is there a surprising growth in unexpected categories for you? I'm genuinely focusing a lot more on D2C. Sorry, B2B. First, I realized and I was never a B2B person. I was always a B2C agency. I realized they have a lot of money and they are now very hungry for experiment. Earlier, they were very suit-booted guy. Now, they have become more colorful. So, that is one great category to work with. Second, tech clients, they are and fintech clients, anybody who is basically into a tech angle of a thing, they will be very good because they will be very open to AI, agentic solutions, etc., etc., to try and do stuff with, right? The third one is even fintech, right? 50% of the profit in the economy is made by fintech clients. So, they obviously have money. So, that is one big piece of doing this. Then, I think you can experiment with a lot of FMCG clients because they are very heavy on advertising. People who try 14-50% of their revenue in advertising can be great clients. And then, if you want to make quick bucks, then whoever has got funding, pick them up, right? Or whoever is launching because they will have very good funds in the first two, three years and any of which may be not looking for loyalty and lifetime value, that area of your revenue will shoot up because of that client. So, that is how you take a jungle between them. Last year, many agencies reported client losses despite industry growth. What is grapes client retention rate? And how do you prevent clients from consolidating budgets with other agencies? Like I said, there is no loyalty left in the industry. So, my client retention rate will be 50-60% not more than that. 40% of the clients do churn. There is no question to it. Sometimes, we are at fault, sometimes clients at fault. Sometimes it's just bad luck, okay? Or just they want to try something. See, at the end of the day, what I've seen in a industry like us, we are very dependent on our employee. If you have a good employee, he will retain the client. If you have a bad employee, the client will lose, right? You can only go to the client, X number of times and say I'm changing the team, I'm changing the team, but how many times will you do that also, right? So, sometimes I though openly go and tell the client, I know we fucked up and trust me, I was betting on the person, we should have looked into it, we did not do it. So, you have the choice to move out. Let's be honest and open about it, right? Because I know if I make one good year where I am winning 100 awards and I've done genuinely 10 campaigns, which is all over PR and people love the campaign because it had some novelty in it, they will come back to me, right? And we've seen with so many new agencies cropping up, they're just two year old, three year old and clients have started going to them because if they made a good name for themselves in the market and a specialty for them in the market, so there's no dirt of work and clients will come back to you. So, I think the churn rate can only be stopped by three ways, one, think of a three year vision and plan with them, right? Don't think of the next quarter and next campaign. Second, define KPI is very clearly out of that three year GTM. So, if I go and meet you, let's say if I have a review meeting with the CMO or a CEO and if I have to finish my meeting in one minute, how can you finish a review meeting in one minute? If you are home with that, that can decide the rest of the time with the client. So, I say if you've defined and that can only happen if you say, boss, I was supposed to get you 100 units of sale, I've got you 120 units. How did I get you don't bother? I'm going to the house and I'm going to make a difference, right? Let's say if I said I was supposed to get you three awards and I've got you five done. I was supposed to get your brand consideration score up by three points, done, right? That's what the client can say. It's not fun to work with you because you were supposed to be holding your hand. We were at your place last night. You'll do it with anyone else, right? But KPI is meet, right? It's a partnership at the end of the day. Then the client can choose to go anywhere. But the problem today is that you're all afraid of KPI. My team KPI promised me to do that. So, I think that's the two best ways to do it. Have a long term vision, define quantifiable KPIs and everything can be quantified. There's nothing which can all be quantified specifically in the communication world. And then you're home. More brands are now building in-house creative and media teams. In sourcing is on the rise. How do you convince the CMO that outsourcing to grapes makes more sense than building in-house? I infract appreciate if you guys can create an in-house team, right? And it's very important. I'll tell you why, okay? I have five people in your social. Okay? I have three clients in social. They're not working on your brand all day. They're not creating content. They're asking for extra money because that's how a model is made, right? If you can run a in-house team for execution, there is nothing brilliant than that, right? If you get the right team, problem is to get the right team also today. And I love Gen Zs, but a majority of them are not easy to work with, right? Second, but you can't drive strategy within-house teams, right? Because what happens is there are two big challenges. One, you need a seasoned person to do that and you might not have the budget for that CDC. Second, you need an experienced person who is working on eight different brands to bring a new perspective to you. You can't get that with one person in your team, right? And the third biggest piece is when your hands are busy doing in-house execution, you won't have time to think through a strategy. And this happens with us as an agency. Also, you give me two-campaign brief. I'll be so busy. I'll not think about the third thing, right? And then we say, "Hey, I don't know how to do that." And again, the same problem comes in. Your GTM is not defined. You have ten different things to crack in the same month. You have five people to do that. Ten different things. You'll never achieve success, whether in-house or with an agency. So, define roles. What will your in-house team do? So, if it is about content creation on a day-to-day basis for social media, please do a in-house team. So many clients have called me and I said, "Hey, what are you doing in-house team?" And they were like, "Shadha, you serious? You're an agency. You should get this business." I said, "Hey, you should remember me in good times. I don't have the intention to do that." So, that's where they really appreciate the facts, the truth that we bring on table, right? A new client has called me and I said, "What are you doing? I have never paid. You're in-house. And he said, "Shadha, I'll call you every fortnight just to take tips." I said, "Tip, how do you feel?" So, I said, "I can help you, but then don't be greedy. You know only there's a lot of things to do." Right? So, I don't think it's a bad idea. But don't compare a in-house team without calculating your seat cost and putting that as a cost comparison to an agency. So, I said, "I'm Rs. 50,000. You're Rs. 50,000." I said, "My seat cost is Rs. 50,000. After that, I'll give you Rs. 20,000." I said, "I'll work in a free time." So, that respect needs to come in. Rest, I don't think it's a fight. It's a, it needs to coexist in the system, defining what is an agency job and what is the in-house team job. And how do you prevent your margins from being squeezed by procurement departments? What's your strategy in dealing with them? I was, I was speaking to, I'll tell you, I was speaking to Lulu Raghavan a few weeks back. And she said, "Very something very interesting." She said, "You know what we do, Bishal? We actually give a presentation separately to procurement departments also." So, you know, we, we tell them, I mean, one is giving respect to those guys that, you know, it's not just the CMO or the CEO who's important. You are also important. And we will give a presentation to you also. So, you get to know what value we are bringing to the table. And only after that, I start telling them, now you tell me where you see us, you know, getting squeezed. Oh, brilliant. I think I will implement this strategy. Yeah. But what do you do right now? Yeah. So, I have sat with so many commercial discussions now. I know the code. So, there is no good company in a commercial team to produce 10-30% cost. Okay, they have written a sheet in their Kiara. You need to know that as a benchmark. If you know that 10% to 30%, you have to work on it. And you go to that table and sit down and say, "I have already done three rounds of negotiation with your team." I can't go down on it. You are disrespecting his job. So, always keep a buffer for the commercial team to close. In fact, I've been so shameless. I have gone to the marketing guy and I said, "You should negotiate. You should also negotiate commercial. If I do, I am not sending you the cost. I have to send you to the commercial." Okay, I am never going to do that. And they are like, "No, there is no one here." I said, "If I come." So, look, I am not going to reduce the cost. And I have genuinely done this. I've closed the price with the marketing team on something and I've sent a 10% higher cost to the commercial team because I know that they will negotiate. And you need to respect their job. Right? Second is very simple. If you have crossed the three bids, Kiara, technical, round commercial, round pay, at a level, if you come to L1 or T1 technical, but a commercial in L3O, right? Because your pricing is higher. Then you sit down with the commercial team and explain that, Kiara, if you come to your company, then use words. I mean, by the time you have realized that, I am very mufat, right? And I call a spade a spade. So, I told them that, "Year, you go and ask for salary if you leave the job from here today." So, you will work on sales salary. Now, if you have a value of your service, then my service is also a value. You will have a roadside pay agency, you will get a good job. Now, you will get many agencies. But today, I know what my value is. So, if you think that this value is going to bring in right returns to you, then you sign me up. And I think, till now, that has worked. But I love this one idea. I think I will definitely give them more respect. Yeah. I've started implementing that also actually in the last four, five weeks. So, was actually quite brilliant. Yeah. I think this is a very good idea. Simple logic, it works so well. Yeah. Have you ever felt pressure or have you ever thought about joining a holding company? Has ever people, I'm sure people would have approached it in some manner. I think, do you think about it? Do you think it makes sense? It makes sense. I'll tell you why. Three, four different levels, okay? So, I remember one of the panel discussions I was in and this question was asked, "Are you ready to let go of your company and sell it to someone?" And that's what, I think, every agency dream is key, IPO Nikol Jai or big Jai. That's how you make large money. Let's be honest about it, right? And then this founder was like, no, no, it's my baby. I'm attached to this name and I'm not going to do this. How can you let go of a company that you've built from scratch and spend, please, this night, but then the question came to me. It was like, will you let go of your name as graves? I said, I've let go of my personal name, yeah, so many times. I was called Ricky when I was a kid. Then I was called Shaddha Agarwal, then I had to change my name to Shaddha Agar, right? I mean, I had no problem losing my name again, as long as my vision is being met. What is my goal in the life, in life, right? That's what needs to be met. So, I think it's a brilliant thought, depending on your goal. So, first is money. No question asked. You make money. Agents, you know, your clients were with us today too. They'll be with you tomorrow. They'll be with you, they'll be with you tomorrow. They'll be with you. Right? Your vision and you should stay true to your vision. The second big vision is, I genuinely appreciate consolidation puts you on a bigger platform. Right? I can stand on a crossroad and shout, I am way more sexier, better, more driven, more involved than any other large agencies that you are working with currently. But will I get that business? Will I get that chance also? But if I'm today a part of a large agency and I knock on a door of a client saying, this is the agency that I'm a part of, I might, the doors will open to me, right? And trust me, the same work. Today a large agency, the people who are in the same agency, they are also in the same agency, they are all moving around here. So, there are no service standards in the knowledge, in the quality, there is no difference in quality. Yes, you can say that they have two proprietary tools, there are so many tools in the market, you will get data, I will get them. So, people are not understanding that and they are still stuck on the fact, I want a bigger agency to work with and Dubai is classically one of those market who always want to bigger name to work with, right? So, I genuinely feel a tag on your company can also get you bigger names, bigger platforms, more opportunities. And again, if that's your goal, you should figure out a relationship like that. In that case, don't do a 100% acquisition because then your money is not your goal. Your goal is to increase your business. Then do a acquisition which is like a 49%, 30%, so that you get a bigger. So, depending on your objective, I think it's a great methodology, but you should be knowing what you're getting into. All right, and with that Shadha, thank you so much for such a brilliant conversation, I really enjoyed myself. Thank you a lot for being so generous with your time. Anytime, I think this was amazing, it is interesting always to answer different perspectives and sometimes when you listen to these questions, it was amazing to be here. And that is a wrap on Episode 18. I told you Shadha would bring the harvest. Thank you for coming on and showing us how to scale an agency without losing the geek within. Next Sunday, the Indian app geek will celebrate with Episode number 60, and we will have Kevin Markett from the Thansa for it. If you've enjoyed this episode, do the usual Raiders, Roastas, or just share this with that one friend, still thinks digital marketing is just posting on Facebook. The Indian ad geek streams on all major podcast apps. Shadha is not on X now, but I am at Vishal Van Mera everywhere, hit me up with your feedback. Until next time, keep your creative antennas tuned, and you add geek flying high, stay quirky, stay curious, and keep getting out.