Ex-OYO employee’s startup is integrating marketing strategies for Fortune 500 clients
Ex-OYO Social Media Manager's marketing agency, Kreativ Street, has worked with more than 75 clients, including Fortune 500 companies within two years.
When Neeraj Sancheti joined OYO as the Brand Strategy and Social Media Manager, the company was growing to 110 cities from 10 cities. Neeraj’s marketing efforts had to be strong, focused and fast.
"At OYO, we were working with multiple agencies - social media, creative, video-production agencies.... it was often difficult to work with multiple agencies and bring them all on the same page," he says.
That’s how Neeraj decided to make the hurdle his opportunity.
The 27-year-old, along with Prashant Singhroha (29), Hemant Kumar (26), setup Kreativ Street, an integrated marketing agency that brings all elements of marketing – from creatives to strategy – under one roof. Later, Mahesh Devrani (27) joined as part of the founding team.
"The future is about integrated marketing agencies - who can provide a wide spectrum of services across the consumer's path to purchase," Neeraj adds.
Based in Gurugram, Kreativ Street today has an impressive list of over 75 clients, including Fortune 500 companies HCL Technologies and Michelin. Other prominent clients include Future Group and Cremica.
It offers services ranging from designing a logo and brand identity to managing digital marketing - including social media marketing - and performance marketing in the form of Facebook, Google and LinkedIn advertisements.
"One of my most important learnings at OYO was agility. Turn around processes have to be very fast and that can be done only when you have agile processes. Having very agile processes has helped OYO scale up faster," says Neeraj. He tries to put this to practice even at Kreativ Street.
In a digital world, he explains, an ad is aired on TV and can be posted on the internet or an ecommerce platform. "A customer's path to purchase is much longer now and has changed over the years. Now we need agencies that can help you across different touch points in the consumer's path to purchase," says Neeraj.
The Kreativ Street team
While Hemant and Mahesh were Neeraj's ex-colleagues at digital marketing agency FrogIdeas, Prashant was introduced to Neeraj by a common friend.
Neeraj has a master's in international marketing from the University of Strathclyde of Glasgow, while Hemant studied at NIFT Delhi and is an expert in UI/UX designs, graphics designing, photography and interior designing. Prashant, a social media influencer, was the owner of the marketing agency FTW Digital, and Mahesh, who has an MBA in marketing and operations, was with Reliance Entertainment.
The startup has three offices - two in Gurugram and one in Mumbai – and they make sure one of the co-founders is personally involved in each project. Kreativ Street also has its own in-house video production unit called Kreativ Studios and having made corporate videos for several clients, the company is now looking to add more services to its offering and is working towards creating bite-sized high-quality digital video content on a large scale.
Kreativ business
Kreativ Street has two revenue models –while some clients are on a monthly retainer model, others are on a project basis. "Our clients’ portfolio is a mixed bag with brands from all sectors from technology, B2B, FMCG, F&B, fashion and lifestyle, travel, BFSI, education, and ecommerce," says Neeraj.
Kreativ Street also offers brand strategy and research, creative development, UI/UX, website and application development and maintenance, social media marketing, email/SMS and affiliate marketing, corporate video conceptualisation and production, search engine optimisation, data analytics, community management and influencer marketing.
In the two years of its existence, Kreativ Street’s founders claim its revenue has grown 5x year-on-year. The company has done projects with Nissan, Amazon, Renault and Paytm. The bootstrapped startup has no plans to raise funding and has been profitable since day one.
According to a 'Digital Advertising in India 2017' report, digital advertising spends in India were estimated at Rs 9,266 crore as of 2017-end and are expected to grow at a CAGR of 30 percent to touch Rs 12,046 crore by December this year.
Kreativ Street competes with agencies like iProspect India, WATConsult, Webchutney, Mirum India, and Pinstorm, and claims its integrated approach to digital marketing gives it an edge, says Neeraj.