MxMIndia

Tag: Vikas Tandon

  • Tandon was founder of Indigo which was acquired by Leo Burnett in 2012

    Bombay Design Centre appoints Vikas Tandon as a board advisor

    By Our Staff

     

    Bombay Design Centre, the design and tech firm, has announced the appointment of Vikas Tandon as a board advisor. An IIM-A alumnus, the musician and tech strategist, Tandon was founder of Indigo Consulting (which was acquired by Leo Burnett in 2012) will play an advisory role supporting Bombay DC leadership in focus areas of strategy, growth and management.

     

    Said Ankur Rander, Founder & CEO of Bombay Design Centre: “Vikas is a leader, an entrepreneur, a culturist and a strategic thinker. He has an enviable body of work and an inimitable width of experience. As we grow and expand, our board is often tasked with taking strategic decisions. We turn to our advisors for perspective, and long-term understanding and to help us navigate chaotic environments. Vikas is coming on board at a juncture where we are trying to set new design and strategic work benchmarks while also defining the organisation’s future roadmap. We firmly believe that with his experience and entrepreneurial zeal, he can help us spot the opportunities, avoid the pitfalls and build a truly global Indian design firm. We are delighted to have him join us and look forward to working with him”.

     

    Commenting on his appointment as an advisor, Tandon said: ”As part of my efforts to stay in touch with the industry and design trends while at Indigo Consulting, I would always look up interesting UX design work and the people behind the work. I discovered Bombay Design Centre during one such recce and was immediately impressed with their refreshing, international-grade design and execution. I got to know Ankur and his team and was further impressed by their larger-than-life passion to “design a better India”.

     

    When Ankur suggested coming on board as an advisor, I saw it as not only an opportunity to stay engaged with the industry I have been a part of since 1998 but also a chance to be a part of a movement to push Indian design and UX standards to a global level and beyond. The Bombay DC team, in my opinion, has the talent, vision and drive to do some amazing things in this space, and I hope I can contribute in some way while helping them build and scale a profitable business”.

     

  • Leo Burnett's Indigo Consulting blended latest trends in design and technology for simplified, jargon-free content

    Birla Sun Life MF gets Indigo to develop jaanotohmaano.com

    By A Correspondent

     

    Leading mutual fund company Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund (BSLMF) retained Indigo Consulting for developing a platform for its recently launched investor education and awareness programme Jaanoge Tabhi Toh Maanoge. Indigo Consulting, a full-service interactive marketing and technology agency from the Publicis Groupe, developed the www.jaanotohmaano.com website that is an integral part of the BSLMF initiative.

     

    Ajay Kakar

    Speaking about the website Ajay Kakar, Chief Marketing Officer, Financial Services – Aditya Birla Group said, “Jaanoge Tabhi Toh Maanoge is not just a mere campaign. It is a platform that we can own through time here after. The JTTM website which captures facets of mutual funds now becomes the hub that we will continue to enrich with a lot of informative nuggets, life facts and trivia to make it sticky with viewers.”

     

    Vikas Tandon, Managing Director, Indigo Consulting added, “Most content around this topic is perceived to be fairly technical. The biggest task for us was to offset this notion and present mutual fund concepts in a manner that is high on simplicity and visual appeal.”

     

  • Leo Burnett's digital agency sees the Bridgeline iAPPS platform as next step in online marketing solutions to clients

    Indigo Consulting partners Bridgeline Digital Inc

    By A Correspondent

     

    Leading digital agency Indigo Consulting and Bridgeline Digital have announced a partnership enabling Indigo Consulting to offer digital marketing services on the iAPPS platform.  The agency has taken this move to further equip itself with the tools and support to deliver superior web-based marketing solutions to its clients.

     

    Said Vikas Tandon, Managing Director, Indigo Consulting, “The deeply integrated nature of the iAPPS platform will better position us in our journey towards offering future-ready marketing communication services to our clients, making our partnership with Bridgeline Digital the next logical step for us.”

     

    Since being introduced to the market in 2008, the iAPPS platform has provided thousands of customers with an integrated web solution that puts business context at the forefront of its core value proposition, notes a communique.

     

    Commenting on the company’s latest partnership, Mr. Titas Gupta, Vice President, APAC, Bridgeline Digital Inc., says, “Indigo’s proven track record as an industry leading digital marketing agency in the APAC marketplace will further establish iAPPS as a worldwide business solution helping businesses achieve digital engagement.”

     

  • He will be responsible for managing Indigo Consulting's relationships and scaling up the digital business in the region

    Nitin Singh joins Indigo Consulting as biz head

    Nitin Singh

    By A Correspondent

     

    Digital agency Indigo Consulting has roped in Nitin Singh as Business Head, Delhi NCR. He will be responsible for managing Indigo Consulting’s relationships and scaling up the digital business in the region. Prior to this, Mr Singh was with Media2win, where he was responsible for Digital execution and New Business Development in North India.

     

    Speaking on the appointment, Vikas Tandon, MD, Indigo Consulting said: “While we have been present in the Delhi region for a while, we were missing strong leadership to drive our aggressive growth plans. Nitin’s valuable experience and relationship with customers will help us provide superlative digital marketing solutions to clients in the Delhi region.”

     

    Commenting on his decision to join Indio Consulting, Mr Singh said: “I have always admired Indigo Consulting’s work in the digital space, especially when it comes to their creative and technology capabilities. I hope to learn more about these and their integration with digital strategy while leveraging my experience to create new practices at Indigo Consulting.”

     

    Mr Singh is a post graduate in business administration from the School of Management Studies, New Delhi and has more than 9 years experience in sales and marketing. Besides Media2win, he has worked with Quasar Media, QAI India and Compare Infobase where his responsibilities ranged from new business development to sales to online digital media planning.

     

  • Too harsh a question? India's dismal showing in Cyber & Mobile at Cannes Lions 2012 pushed us to discuss it with industry leaders

    Are we Duhs in Digital Media?

     

    By Tuhina Anand and Shruti Pushkarna

     

    India has once again drawn a blank in the Cyber Lions category at Cannes 2012. From the 27 entries from India in this category, none made it to the shortlist. Considering that digital is the talk at all industry forum and the future, or is it actually the present, of advertising, its dismal performance at Cannes makes one realize that India is still miles behind on this medium.

     

    Nagesh Alai

    Nagesh Alai, Executive Director – India Operations at DraftFCB Group, pointed out: “It is not surprising not seeing a shortlist in the Cyber Lions from our shores. Most in our industry continue to see and use Digital as a ‘medium of messaging’ instead of seeing and using Digital as a ‘medium to engage with and start a conversation about the brand’. It is a classic case of getting stuck in hoary mindsets of a 30-second TV commercial. The day our digital specialists get out of this mindset, I reckon one will see a sea change in the digital executions and becoming award worthy. I am sure we will see that happen in the not too distant a future.”

     

    Talking about the digital in India, Carlton D’Silva, Chief Creative Officer, Hungama Digital Services Pvt. Ltd, said: “As I have mentioned in the past, the standard of good digital work in India to compete at the Cannes can only be made possible if the playing fields are even.”

     

    He listed the factors that go against good digital creative work, which remain remains the same – the inability to acquire the requisite budget for a digital campaign, the lack of time and the lack of risk taking (both from the client as well as agency side) the digital medium is still used more for its effectiveness than creativity.

     

    A senior mobility and digital media executive with a leading media agency felt that India’s performance in Cannes Digital categories should at least have some positive side-effects. “Why this happened? If I have to sum up in short, it is because of lack of respect for the Digital medium, which comes from ignorance about the medium and its possibilities; lack of budgets, which comes from lack of respect for the medium; lack of creative talent, which stems from lack of budgets,” she added.

     

    The executive explained that there is a need for a reality check on how evolved the consumers, marketers and agencies are, as compared to Cannes shortlisted entries or winners. “Look at the short-listed entries for Cyber Lions, they come from countries which have more than 75% internet penetration, while we are celebrating our 10% mark. Of course, one can argue that the population of these countries is lesser than some of our states but one also needs to understand that their consumers are also much more evolved. Again, take a look at the Mobile Lions winners, what do you see? Smart phones and Tablets! In our country Voice is the most penetrated medium on Mobile and we have 21 million smartphones in a mobile subscriber base of 900 million plus. If rich media creatives are the tickets to Lions, I would rather design mobile campaigns that work in Indian eco-system and bring value to advertisers in terms of media effectiveness,” she said.

     

    Vikas Tandon

    Giving his take on India’s performance in this category, Vikas Tandon, Founder and Managing Director, Indigo Consulting said: “To start with, I think we should recognise that Cannes is as big as it gets, the competition is really tough with hundreds of entries from all over the world, so there is no shame in not winning. We must keep learning from the experiences and pegging away at it. Let’s not write off the Indian team because we lost one tournament. But, definitely it must serve as a reminder that we need to commit ourselves a lot more to Digital than we are now. Among Indian marketers, it is still not as important/critical a piece in the marketing game plan as it is in many other countries and hence, while it seems to get some attention, it just does not get the time or budgets. One of the most frustrating challenges that digital agency invariably have to encounter in India is lack of execution time. Once you have an idea/construct, and even detailing it takes time. Execution is, of course, equally critical for success, and the time constraints often do not allow an idea to reach its full potential.

     

    So one thing has clearly come out from this, is that for Indian marketers, digital is an after-thought and not still a critical medium.

     

    Naresh Gupta

    Naresh Gupta, Managing Partner, Bang in the Middle when asked on what ails Indian digital advertising said that he would rather look from the perspective of why the Indian digital advertising is not growing up. Giving his take, he pointed out four aspects: “The digital advertising in India is stuck in a time wrap. The traditional method of advertising is about creating awareness, to generate Interest that creates desires that leads to action. More often than not, digital campaigns are built around the same parameter. Digital behaviour is really about search and share, and that is a paradigm that marketers haven’t been able to factor in. This is part of the reason why campaigns neither aid search, nor motivate share.”

     

    Mr Gupta also mentioned that Digital engagement has been reduced to a Facebook page and a Twitter handle: “I am not saying they are not important, they are, but they are just the tools. For a lot of brands getting the followers or number of likes becomes the strategy. Now that’s not really smart. The brands have to have a strategy for social media.”

     

    His third points is that the TV-led thinking for brands where an idea is crafted for TV and then adapted to digital is actually the biggest problem. Consider this, all marketing theories were written before the advent of Internet. The need to position, the need to leverage a singular attribute and build on one are all fine with TV-centric thinking, but not so for ‘word of mouse’-centric thinking. The digital medium has its own dynamics and needs a different take. The strategic thinking that leads to ATL idea needs to be interpreted keeping digital dynamics in mind.

     

    And lastly: “Most importantly, the brand owners need to recognize the importance of digital and craft the entire strategy accordingly. The brand owners too fret to get their TV brief right, but rarely debate to get their digital idea right.”

     

  • What peers and commentators think about JWT's 51% stake in Hungama Digital Services + a report

    Can JWT create digital Hungama with stake buy?

     

    MxMIndia spoke to a cross-section of media professionals to elicit their views on the JWT Singapore acquisition of a majority stake in Hungama Digital Services

     

    Hungama’s telecom business is intact

     

    By A Correspondent

     

    Make no mistake. Hungama hasn’t sold out. Of the 1000+ employees, only 120 will be off to the new company which will only be 51 percent owned by JWT Singapore. And the key telecom business is intact, as are various others.

     

    When on Wednesday, leading advertising agency JWT confirmed its acquisition of a majority stake in Hungama Digital Services, the digital and promotions marketing division of Hungama Digital Media Entertainment. The size of the deal is not known, though the digital services division is said to have aggregated a turnover of Rs50 crore last fiscal. WPP reportedly earns revenues of over Rs 2500 crore from India and Hungama earned around Rs 450 crore last fiscal.

     

    The new entity which will be called Hungama Digital Services Pvt. Ltd.will be a full-service digital agency specializing in digital marketing and social media solutions. As part of the acquisition, Hungama’s activations arm, Hungama Promo Marketing will become a part of Hungama Digital Services Pvt. Ltd. and provide an engagement platform linked to online and offline deliveries.

     

    However, it is not known who from the existing team at Hungama Digital Media would move to the jv. “We haven’t received the new org structure,” a Hungama spokesperson told MxMIndia.

     

    Said Neeraj Roy, MD and CEO, Hungama Digital Media Entertainment, “With JWT, we are now part of the largest advertising network in the world. Hungama Digital Services is the coming together of two exceptional teams in a globally relevant market.” “With this partnership with JWT we hope to offer integrated digital and experiential services to our clients and prepare brands to connect, interact and now transact with their customers.”

     

    Hungama Digital Services has been a dominant player in the digital space for 13 years and is spread across six cities in India. In fact the creative services devision is what Hungama started out with over a decade back. The 120-strong team will continue to drive the agency, including servicing old and new clients and offer creative and promo marketing services, viral marketing campaigns, social media marketing and mobile marketing, applications, managing websites and video services.

     

    For JWT, it’s a good acquisition, an insider told MxMIndia. Said Colvyn Harris, JWT India CEO: “Digital is our next new frontier.The idea of the partnership is to build a digital offering for our clients so we can live up to being a ‘single source’ partner across all their ‘marketing solutions’ needs. What will be most effective in the future is a new set of talented, digital high end specialists who will add new skills and capabilities to what JWT already offers to its clients. We want all our clients to be leaders in their respective categories.”

     

    “We have greatly expanded our digital capability across the region, and we are not standing still. JWT will continue to hire new digital experts and explore possible acquisitions across the region this year,” said Michael Maedel, President, JWT Asia Pacific.

     

    See earlier report: JWT acquires 51% stake in Hungama Digital

    Raghav Anand, Segment Leader-Digital, Ernst & Young (The observer and often advisor)

    Raghav Anand

    I think Digital is an extension that every creative arm should have, but the real efficiency comes from how well it is syndicated with the overall collusion. Most of the agencies which have bought digital companies have not been able to integrate them into the overall setup, and hence not been able to leverage the synergy. So, how well you integrate and leverage the synergies will really decide whether it’s a fantastic acquisition or not. Apart from that, the other important things is that companies like Hungama are not just agencies, they are more of digital workflow companies which do a lot more than advertising and creative. They integrate into mobile and few other things. So it’s important for an agency to fully leverage them.

     

    Arvind Sharma, Chairman of the Indian Subcontinent, Leo Burnett (He recently acquired Indigo, a digital agency)

    Arvind Sharma

    Setting up an outfit from scratch has its own merit as you don’t have to pay a hefty acquisition price. However, I think this is a chicken and egg situation as the challenge is that when starting from scratch, you lack the scale and expertise in the beginning which is a handicap when attracting talent or meeting the needs of a client. You get stuck in sub-optimal size and scale. Particularly in Digital, one needs technical expertise and should be armed with a suite of capabilities to meet the clients’ demand. Therefore, it makes sense to acquire an agency of 150-plus people who are specialists, especially in the digital category which is witnessing a lot of interest from clients too. It immediately gives you scale and expertise. Also today clients want gamut of services under digital. They are not looking for few pieces of digital work; hence having an in-house digital agency helps in delivering.

     

    Mahendra Swarup, Former CEO, Indiatimes, Chairman, Smile Interactive (He’s worked with Pepsico, Indiatimes, Smile Interactive whose Quasar was acquired by WPP, and is now a well-known VC)

    Mahendra Swarup

    I think Digital is not an easy space to get into for traditional agencies. And at this point of time, digital agencies’ valuations are pretty realistic, so it’s always good for the traditional agencies to take over an existing team which understands digital. Also, the digital space is going to start growing at a fast pace, although at this point of time, it has a very low share of the total spends. But it will probably end up growing almost by 75 to 80 per cent year on year. So, it’s a big growth area. Also, I think organic development of a digital agency within an existing traditional agency is just not possible, the existing teams will not understand this space at all. So it’s more an acquisition of knowledge and competence, rather than of revenues. It’s only a question how do they (traditional agencies) get into a space which they will then grow faster.

     

    Alok Kejriwal, CEO & Co-founder of Games2win (He’s a contemporary of Mr Neeraj Roy…)

    Alok Kejriwal

    Whatever be the nature of the investment, I think it is brilliant that Hungama Digital has managed to get a partner like JWT. It shows that people who have been around and helped build the digital landscape over the last 10-12 years have finally begun to see the fruit of their labour as it has been one long arduous battle. Neeraj Roy has fought many battles to get media owners and brand planners to get convinced about the digital platform for India.

     

    Creative people are not like cement bags where you can go to the market and buy them. They are like yogis in the mountains. So when you get hold of a yogi, you’d do anything to keep him. It’s not one size fits all. JWT has a large client portfolio while Hungama has the digital capability. There are some cutting-edge creative digital agencies in the world that are the ones trying to set shop inIndia. For them to buy it makes a lot of sense, but then there are existing creative agencies inIndiathen why buy an outside agency when they are cutting-edge themselves? If you look at Quasar, which is a WPP company, they too are doing a good job. So it varies according to the needs of the marketplace.

     

    Mahesh Murthy, Founder, Pinstorm (He embraced digital early and is known for his forthright views on everything!)

    Mahesh Murthy

    India is one geography in the world where MNC agencies are absent among the large digital agency houses. The basic reason is perhaps their unwillingness to give up on their bread-and-butter – that is media kickbacks and TV film production over-billing. Both of these tend to disappear when you move online and digital-first agencies like Pinstorm have built large practices by focusing more on new technologies and processes, having avoided the kickback-led business that still drives mainstream advertising. Given India’s importance on their global client rosters, the MNCs here have finally figured out that if they can’t build a digital business themselves, they’ll try to buy one. I personally don’t think these random purchases will make much of a difference.

     

    Vikas Tandon, Founder & Managing Director, Indigo Consulting (Indigo was acquired recently by Leo Burnett)

    Vikas Tandon

    It is no surprise at all. The pace of change in the world today is stupendous, and digital media is causing consumer behaviour to change very rapidly. There is no time to build the expertise from scratch, and scale is also critical to success. Another compelling reason is there is not enough digital talent out there – a lot of the experience and expertise resides in entrepreneurial outfits. Hence acquisitions make eminent sense.

     

    Karl Gomes, Co-founder – AgencyDigi (He co-started the agency after a great run as a digital CD)

    Karl Gomes

    When it comes to digital, any news is good news. In fact if you look around in the media marketplace, there have been similar news developments that have happened in the recent past. The focus for agencies should be about coming up with the right idea and focus on the consumers and brands. In today’s world you have to collaborate. My only worry with these acquisitions is I hope they don’t treat them as another division but they work together and in a synergistic fashion. They need to be sitting together on the table when a brief comes across to them rather than just approach it passively. So, an acquisition like this should be good for both the people buying them and for people selling them. We have been approached by agencies but we are completely funded by clients and their business. So we will continue to run independently.

     

    Compiled by Shruti Pushkarna, Johnson Napier and Tuhina Anand

     

  • A day after Publicis announced the acquisition of leading digital agency, Indigo Solutions, MxMIndiaspoke to Indigo’s Managing Director, Vikas Tandon on the reasons for the sell out

    Digital independents & traditional ad agencies need each other: Vikas Tandon

    By Shruti Pushkarna

     

    It appears to be business as usual for Vikas Tandon, founder and managing director of Mumbai-based digital marketing and web development agency Indigo Consulting. On Monday, its acquisition by the Publicis Groupe was formally announced. Indigo will retain its name and operate as a separate unit within the Leo Burnett Group in India. Mr  Tandon will continue as the unit’s Managing Director and report into Mr Arvind Sharma, Chairman of Indian Subcontinent for Leo Burnett. Mr  Tandon is a postgraduate in Business Management from IIM Ahmedabad and has over 18 years’ experience in interactive media, sales and marketing. Prior to starting Indigo Consulting, he had set up and led Mudra Interactive.

     

    At Mudra Interactive, he founded the agency’s digital marketing practice. Indigo Consulting employs a team of over 150 people and provides digital and mobile marketing services to clients like HUL, Asian Paints, HDFC Bank, Kolkata Knight Riders, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Thomas Cook, South Australia Tourism Commission and Cathay Pacific.

     

    A music buff, Mr Tandon counts playing guitar, distance running, travelling, and gadgets among his passions… he has even performed at industry gigs!

    Soon after the acquisition was announced, Vikas Tandon shared with MxMIndia his reasons for selling out to Publicis and his plans for the future… music included.

     

    Indigo was cruising… why then did you sell out?

    I prefer to think of it as shifting gears in our journey towards offering future-ready marketing communication services to our clients, and creating a larger platform for our team to operate on. If selling stake is what it took to ensure Indigo Consulting, which includes the team and myself, goes from strength to strength as an agency of the future, so be it.

     

    Will you still have a stake in the company?

    I’m afraid I am not at liberty to discuss details of the transaction, but suffice to say, I will continue to be the MD of Indigo Consulting and remain committed to the continued growth and prosperity of the company I have nurtured over the last 12 years.

     

    Is it impossible for independents like you to survive in a world of biggies?

    Actually it was not about survival at all. In fact, to my best knowledge we are among the best performing independent agencies in the country with a track record of year on year growth and profitability consistently over every one of the 12 years. And all our client relationships have been direct, without involvement of any agencies. I have every reason to believe that survival would not have been an issue even going forward. However, we also recognize that the consumer and the marketing industry is changing very rapidly. So when the opportunity came to put two complimentary powerhouses together which could potentially result in something neither of us could achieve on our own within a reasonably short span of time, we took it.

     

    At the Creative Abby recently, it was an Ogilvy that won a Grand Prix in digital… Smaller, specialised agencies didn’t fare as well. Right?

    Yes, and I would say it only strengthens my conviction that together with Leo Burnett we will be able to do much better than we have been doing on our own.

     

    Do you see others like you also getting gobbled up?

    I do believe that there is tremendous complementarity of skills in independent digital agencies and traditional advertising agencies, and in many ways they both need each other. However, transactions of this kind depend on a lot of other factors, not the least of which is the chemistry between the people, and the promoters’ own aspirations and appetite for such a transition.

     

    In future: tech driving creativity or the converse?

    Creativity is, without a second thought, the fountainhead of everything, right from existence itself. It just takes different forms and shapes. Tech is increasingly driving our lives, and creativity certainly draws inspiration from various facets of our lives, including tech, but if you ask me what is the force that pushes mankind forward, it has to be creativity.

     

    More time to music…since there’s lesser stress now?

    Given that we took this decision to become part of Leo Burnett to further our growth, work is only going to become exciting and perhaps harder. However, I always have and will continue to try and make more and more time for music.