Taking Brands’ Digital success beyond the Competition
In the fierce and competitive world of digital marketing today, it has become a mammoth task to stand out and shine. Many start-ups too are failing out or getting absorbed by leading companies. However, some incredible success stories have also been conceptualized that are worth learning and aspiring to follow their journey- from humble beginnings to emerging out as a successful name. Their uniqueness, innovative methods and getting the right choice of team help to march them towards newer heights.
Out of them the most inspiring that caught our attention was the journey of Leo Digital Communications Pvt Ltd.
This digital marketing masterpiece started as a ‘university dorm room’ project by web enthusiasts, Suhas Shankarappa, Usha H J and Partha Sarathi GK in 2010 in Chikmagalur-the coffee land of Karnataka. Then known as Ubiquantum, the first digital start-up of the region showcased its product portfolio of Web & Digitalization services and in a spree, caught the eyes of brands and companies which created a clientele of 100+ in just two years since its inception!
Having demonstrated the success, the founding team diversified its product offerings and successfully became the benchmark for upcoming tech startups, nurturing talent and motivating aspiring entrepreneurs while supporting the local communities.
A glimpse of Leo Digital Communications’ Journey
When India was preparing for a mobile services revolution – the launch of the country’s 4g mobile network in 2012-2013, Leo Digital Communications has already secured its position as a uniquely creative and innovative Digital Marketing Company, active at all spheres to usher immense opportunities for the then-emerging digital marketing sector,.
Adding more feathers, the brand doubled its clientele in two years to 200 and earned some of the leading Fortune 500 companies in its portfolio including – State Bank of India, Aditya Birla Group and Tata Group, Shell, Times of India, ABB, Anthology, Tredence Inc, Aashirvaad, Toyota, Twin Health and many more.
Today, the brand proudly boasts as a complete 360-degree Digital Marketing Company with a stronghold on Social Media Marketing, Digital Advertising and in-house expertise in emerging technologies.
Key Milestones
- Partnering with several large creative agencies as their Digital Partner to know and learn the nitty-gritty of brand, creatives, production and mainline advertising.
- Working closely with industry veterans in creating winning strategies for industry-leading companies and visionaries who define the market.
- Have successfully delivered bespoke digital solutions to Large Corporations, Luxury Brands, Real-estate Giants, Retail and Government Institutions.
Re-aligning and Rebranding
“We were pacing ahead and so did our clients’ expectations; there was a need for agility and rapid innovation. We observed it and rebranded our approach.” asserts Suhas, the Director and young leader heading the brand. He further adds, “We revived our organizational structure and acquired multiple startups to boost our competencies and a talent pool for work that was previously outsourced – like production and creatives; all this to achieve a seamless integration between our offerings and bring consistency and quality, to our delivery.”
Mr. Suhas talked about Leo Digital Communications’ journey and motivations in a recent interview. Here are the edited excerpts:
Challenges and Outcomes
- Rebranding from a Tech-Company to a specialized Digital Marketing Agency was a risky move for us. We have been nurturing it for the past years as a Tech Company and now moving into a digital marketing space was itself a big task.
- We had to convince our clients, clear their doubts; building connections and long term relationships took the first year of our journey. Despite the challenges, things turned out fruitful for us. To date, we have completed 10000+ projects and are handling 50+ clients.
- This realignment helped us carve out a niche in the sector – helping to achieve our future commitments towards a value-based business model.
- 2018 has been a great year for Leo Digital Communications- our service offerings opened up to new dimensions of digital communication including Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality and Virtual Reality where we took these technologies from being cliché to the mainstream with real-life utilities.
- Our amalgamation as a founding team – from technology to analytics and creativity, sets us apart from most of the agencies and has always yielded positive results.
Why do you term yourself as a Performance Marketing Agency?
Well, we are one of the first Performance Marketing Agencies in India. When people were just adapting digital marketing, we were already thriving as a Performance Marketing Agency. So when I say performance marketing agency, we commit to numbers and we deliver. Since we started, we have given 10% ROI to our customers, and we do not bill our standard prize, we bill based on what business we give, so we are specialized as a Performance Marketing Agency back in 2017 itself.
Presence
We have our presence across India, US, UK, Australia and the Middle East- Dubai, in terms of our clientele. Over the years, we have penetrated deeply in the market and industries like real estate in India, but in the other countries, we have only touched the surface and we are handling a couple of clients mostly in tech. We are eyeing to anchor the space.
Future Plans
We have started into another digital wing- Virtual Events. We are a boutique Digital Marketing Agency and we want to be a niche marketing agency in future. We are also coming up with a Digital Marketing Audit tool which is called AuditX, a Next-generation tool for digital marketing audits.
We want to be a niche agency, serving the very specific needs of premium customers. Currently, we are working with a few to be unicorn startups and other such companies which are near a billion-dollar valuation. We work deeply with these clients to grow stronger relationships and be specialized in the related domains. We are currently working with Analytics, Food-tech start-ups, AI-based Company, Health Care, and we want to be a specialized service provider and performance partner instead of a regular digital agency.
Words of Wisdom
Most of the startups or fast-growing companies do business like hunting; going on for one customer, preying it and moving on to other. There is a dire need for patience. We are seeing results after the rebranding for the innovations that we did 11 years back and we never went for a funding game, as we were doing quite well on the financial terms. Patience lets you calculate steps and things to look beyond their results.
