KJ Singh & Harish Motwani, Co-Founding Directors, Evolve Brands Pvt. Ltd

They stated their company aims saying “We are an Integrated Marketing Services company which helps brands to improve their customer interaction through one to one approach and create a tactical plan to lead the respective segment they operate in.”

“This gets achieved through B2C or B2B programs both aptly plotted in customer acquisition and retention scenario. Customer acquisition ranges from identification of new prospects, and to convert them through sampling, product initiation etc. and the retention is primarily through Loyalty and relationship programs.”

Their method of helping a company evolve to the next step is all encompassing. They defined their methodology saying “We have a 360 degree approach when we speak about the brand and provide them with all touch points required to approach the customer. Our scope has taken us to sell & service leading brands across the domain of IT, FMCG, Consumer durables, Financial, Pharma etc. We talk to the 3 sets of entities for these customers segments and our initiatives do a terrific amount of engagements in each of these segments.”

• “End-Consumers”
• “Various factions of Trade Value chain-Retailers; Dealers; Wholesalers; Distributors”
• “Influencers”

“The key differentiator in our business is our approach. We provide strategy based on clients objectives, provide research based experiences and implementation platform to manage the same in the best possible manner. Scaling up or tweaking the logistics is also an important part of the planning stage to ensure the results required our achievable. Further differentiation comes as we provide all the implementation capabilities unlike a specialist event/contact center/database marketing company, with robust in-house capabilities for all the customer touch points – ensuring clear deliverables.”

“The second differentiator is how smoothly we imbibe and harness technology to facilitate marketing programs we implement. We have developed tools & constantly innovate on them to facilitate basic elements like contact management to deep insight reporting, measurement & analytics dashboards which helps us and the clients to collectively tweak around and take corrective steps in the middle of program. We have not seen many companies in our space practicing this approach.”

The young entrepreneurs also told Yourstory about the latest developments at Evolve Brands saying “Our current business models and client interface expects us to move Internationally and therefore our first major thrust would be to open up an office in APAC Region and subsequently create a larger presence in Mumbai and Bangalore where we are present through operational offices only.”

Their entrepreneurial ambitions were based on past experiences. They filled us in on how they veered towards entrepreneurship saying “The entire world had just awakened from the dot com boom & burst of 2001-2002. We had witnessed companies with soaring ambitions and flickering Revenue models collapsing on the streets. It was perhaps the first time that India was witnessing this Entrepreneurial revolution and it had been brought to an end with very few survivors.”

“The emerging slowdown in the new economy business had thrown a challenge to the professionals around to build up businesses with sound revenue generation mechanisms & monetization together with building strong teams which possessed passion rather than an opportunistic approach to their careers. Moreover, it was the need of the current hour where elements of Business Intelligence, Analytics, database management and Loyalty were to become the philosophy of the companies and not merely an extension of their marketing initiatives.”

“So our individual ambitions gelled beautifully with the opportunity available. As a bi-product of our entrepreneurship initiative, we got an opportunity to beat the 9-to-5 job cycle, it was very refreshing.”

“The biggest challenge has been the right mix of people in the strategy and operations considering that most of the players in this industry are large and our part of large groups – WPP, IPG, Omnicom etc. and therefore to get the right set of people at the right price becomes a challenge. We have tried to grow slowly with the help of the small team we have, ensuring we reach a sizeable scale after which we intend to go all out to expand and get the right mix. We have made considerable headway this year we expect to expand our wings to bigger and better teams in Mumbai and Bangalore to start with.”

Despite all their experience and intelligence, there were still a few lessons to be learnt. They recalled their slip-ups candidly saying “In fact, we made a couple of mistakes. 2 most prominent ones are: The belief that we would have some clients to start with the moment we start a new business venture – in the first year of our business, we did not have a single client, based on which we had made our projections and this was the biggest setback.”

“However 5 years down the line we feel we have been able to over come all the mistakes we made and have been able to start creating a trajectory to reach a sizeable business volume and most importantly many happy and retained customers.”

“We were approaching angel investors and our inexperience made us fall in love with the first affirmation we received. And we clung on to it. Had we been a little more patient, there was an ocean of opportunities available. We sort of under-valued ourselves and partnered with the first one.”

It was a case of mixed blessing when it came to their initial investors, but it all worked out after a bit of adjustment. They spoke about their current size and strength saying “We started small with 12 people and 1 office (800 sq ft) in New Delhi in a small residential flat in October 2003, moved to a larger space (1800 sq ft) with in 18 months of our operations with 40 people and then over to a 4000 Sq ft facility in 2.5 years time since inception. We had by then 3 operational branches in Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai.”

There were many factors that blended in to help them achieve their dreams, foremost being the long standing client relations, who are the biggest brand ambassadors of their services.

Their penchant for success continues with the duo winning “Gold” for the Best Trade Loyalty program at the WOW Experiential Awards 2008; they also won “2 Silvers” in similar categories in the long term channel engagement. They exulted in their victory saying “This is the first year where we participated in such a public forum and were rewarded; however we expect this to carry on in the coming years. We are eagerly looking forward to some International Reward Forums where we have participated.”

Despite being down on their luck they never gave up, they explained why saying “There have been various instances when we thought of giving it up but the trust of our team and clients have always motivated us well and we feel we have a responsibility to them and are ensuring that the same is being fulfilled.”

“It is said that the biggest reward of entrepreneurship is the “Recognition”, which we have received our share of. Moreover, the challenges on a daily basis, the trust of our clients and the passion, commitment and motivation of our team keeps us going in the fast lane.”

They also stated their vision for the near future saying “We envisage that Evolve will continue to do great work and will be bigger in scale and larger in spread of offices. We also contemplate to work strategically with some of the larger Advertising groups who are very keen on partnering us for our range & scope of activities for their set of clientele. It sort of compliments their business and completes the media based service offering they currently have.”

They advised future entrepreneurs with their personal key to success saying “The mantra for being successful is simple. We call it BIN - Belief, Innovate & Delegate.”

“Believe In yourself, your product/service offering. This would determine how far you would go.”

“Constantly innovate & evolve. No one would partner a monotonous service offering. Every one needs Zing & excitement around.”

“Delegate work to Teams and encourage them. Give them space and responsibility to perform. In a services business, they will represent you and your company. Invest in them.”