How a reunion at a restaurant got two young women to follow their dreams and startup - the THINKINK story
Sheekha Panwala and Hiral Dhruv were talking over a meal at a restaurant in Mumbai. Old friends, both of them had graduated from in Fine Arts from the Rachana Sansad College two years ago and were working with established companies. They were 24 years old back then and fairly comfortable with their lives but the itch to do something on their own was getting stronger. “We were sharing our experiences post graduation and found the journey to be fairly similar, good but lacking that sense of purpose. And a startup seemed like the best way to go forward,” the duo reminisces.
The idea of working together was thus ignited and the bricks got laid one by one as these girls brainstormed everyday while commuting in the local train from their respective work places. And thus took birth THINKINK, a design agency in December, 2011. Hailing from Mumbai, which is an advertising hub, it got very competitive to establish an independent agency at such a young age. Morever, the challenge lied in how they would differentiate themselves from the others. To this, the duo remarks, “Along with ensuring the best creative work , an on-time job delivery and a smooth functioning between agency and client, we provide our services at an extremely affordable rate which none of the bigger agencies do, as commissions play a major role for such advertising giants. In return, the clients love the curiosity, enthusiasm and the fact that we are young and ready to explore and help them market, irrespective of any product.”
Starting with one client, today the company has grown to have a host of clients from sectors like Pharma, Fashion, Food, Finance and Realty in 2 years. This was possible as the duo believed in one thing, “The challenge is to maintain relationship with your client and not just to get them on board,” remarks Hiral.
There is also an interesting story behind the logo. Sheekha explains, “The left side of the logo 'THE BRAIN' symbolizes our thought and the 'INK DROP' on the right suggests our specialized form of execution which is, Print. At Thinkink, analogous to the functions of the left brain, we analyze the clients’ need in detail in order to ink out an aesthetic and creative design solution that suit their business values.”
Completely bootstrapped, THINKINK has expanded itself to give services like animation, multimedia and plans to enter into other horizons of designing like 3D designing and product designing in future. Without having any business background, the girls learned to do everything they came across in order to learn all the aspects of entrepreneurship. As Hiral remarks, ' We both always believed that challenge is to become something on our own'.
Their work can be seen on the website: THINKINK
