Mumbai: Grapes is India’s leading integrated communications agency. Launched as a website development company, Grapes started offering digital marketing services in 2015 and today it offers a gamut of integrated communications services (digital and offline) with the aim of providing a comprehensive set of solutions under one roof. The agency’s edge comes from solving brand and business problems, by staying true to a data-first and consumer insight-first approach that allows the agency to stay a cut above the rest.
The Grapes motto simply is #WeOwnIt. It is an extension of the organisation’s belief in its capabilities and determination to deliver results for its clients. The leadership and people at Grapes strongly believe that nothing is impossible when everyone strives to make the clients’ advertising, marketing and communications goals a reality. Moreover, #WeOwnIt also exudes a much-needed sense of accountability, hunger and assurance.
Shradha Agarwal is the young and dynamic Co-Founder & CEO of Grapes, India’s leading integrated communications agency. A mother, a maverick and an entrepreneur, Shradha loves to lead from the front and take every challenge head-on. It all came together when she started her entrepreneurial journey by joining forces with Himanshu Arya and launching Grapes (previously Grapes Digital) in 2015. Over the last 8 years, Shradha has been at the helm of scaling up the organisation into one of India’s largest independent digital agencies that it is today. She has been an ardent believer of combining technology and creativity, which is at the heart of Grapes providing result-oriented, innovation-focused services to its clients.
Indiantelevision.com in conversation with Shradha Agarwal, Co-Founder & CEO, Grapes on the agency’s growth, the services offered to clients, the agency’s motto and the way forward.
Edited excerpts
On the various expertise of Grapes
At Grapes, we specialise in providing integrated communication and marketing services to our clients, while taking a strategy and KPI-first approach. We believe that we work more as a partner to our clients, who own their business and brand problems, rather than merely being an agency. Our expertise lies in our ability to provide data and insight-led solutions to these problems, and further amplify them through experience and tech. By deeply understanding the brand’s objectives and the KPIs that they want to achieve, we are precisely able to leverage the variety of services at our disposal, to offer a holistic set of solutions to meet their unique communication needs.
On the agency’s motto, culture and edge
Our motto simply is #WeOwnIt. It is an extension of our belief in our capabilities and our determination to deliver results for our clients. At Grapes, we believe that nothing is impossible when we strive to make our client’s advertising, marketing and communications goals a reality. Moreover, #WeOwnIt also exudes a much-needed sense of accountability and assurance.
Continuing a little on the same thread, ‘ownership’ is a large part of our cultural DNA as well. When people are encouraged to call a project, a piece of work, or a place, their own, productivity skyrockets and so does work satisfaction. Add to it the hunger and passion for continuous learning and updating oneself, and you’ve got the entirety of the Grapes culture.
I ardently believe that our edge comes from our data and experience-led ideas and activations. Whenever we think of ideas, we think data-first and consumer insight-first. We’ve learnt from experience over the years, that as long as we stay true to these two things, we stay a cut above the rest.
On Grapes being in the business for the past 8 years and it’s USP
It is both an exciting and a cluttered time for the digital marketing space, when there is no entry barrier to the industry and by its very culture, it is quite the attractive option for the younger entrants. So, yes there are several players offering the same services as we do, but what sets us apart is that we don’t just provide the service for the sake of it, but rather aim to help the clients themselves strategise around it. For instance, we have proprietary models where we’ve outlined how your content strategy, social media strategy, moment marketing strategy, etc. should be, which aren’t typically available in the market. So, the clients who usually go for these models are the ones who are looking to evolve their digital marketing game from a long-term perspective, and such is the clientele we cater to.
Similarly, it is imperative to identify the set of clients you want to work with based on other factors as well. In such a cluttered market, one player can’t service clients on both ends of the budget spectrum, so defining an ideal yet realistic range of marketing budgets is necessary to establish dominance in that range. And that is what we have always done.
On the services offered to clients
Grapes is an integrated communications agency, and as such we offer a gamut of digital and offline services with an aim of providing a comprehensive set of solutions under one roof. This includes a wide range of services which are divided into Owned, Earned and Paid. Some examples of these are:
Owned: Website Design & Development, Ecommerce Development, Mobile App Development, Marketplace Development, Social Media Management, Branding and Strategy, Internet of Things (IoT)
Earned: Public Relations, Influencer Marketing, Online Reputation Management (ORM), Content Development, User-Generated Content, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Paid: Media Planning & Buying, Performance Marketing, Ecommerce Media, Programmatic Marketing
On the impressive roster of clients and sharing some of the most memorable work
We are proud to have worked with a wide range of clients across different industries. Some of our most memorable work comes in the form of our recent campaigns. National Tiles Day is celebrated on 23rd February every year, and we wanted to mark the occasion with vibrance and meaning for Hindware. Working with the insight that tonnes of construction waste is filling up our landfills without proper resources to recycle them, with the Broken Not Waste campaign, we urged the audience to recycle their broken tiles with simple yet artful DIY tips. We also tied up with Delhi Street Art to build a 32 square feet mosaic of such broken tiles to deliver considerable impact.
Most recently, the campaign that stood out for us was #SaluteTheFarmHER for the DS Group. Realising the glaring gap between the percentage of female workforce on Indian farms and their representation online, we aimed to bridge this gap, even if only a little, by targeting Google’s algorithm. We collaborated with over 50 media houses who write exclusively on Indian agriculture or have a dedicated column to it, and requested them to consciously use the images of female farmers for their stories. More than 30 such stories showed up on Google Images search results for the keywords “Indian Farmer”, in the month of March 2023. This was an almost 30% increase in representation from before.
On the world turning towards digital in a big way
Digital has been on a growth trend for quite some time now, but with the continuous and ongoing stream of technologies like Metaverse, ChatGPT, NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) and AR/VR (Augmented Reality/ Virtual Reality), the recent push has been phenomenal. I have been quite excited about devising innovative ways to integrate these technologies for real-world applications, where they can enhance the everyday user experience rather than substitute it altogether.
Over the last year or so, Grapes has leveraged these new and advanced digital mediums for impactful campaigns. For DS Group’s 95th Founders’ Day, we crafted a unique NFT for the brand, mapping their 95 year-long legacy within the latest technology of the time.
Similarly, when the deepfake technology was creating all the buzz, we employed it skilfully to help WION address the very real issue of fake news on the internet. Using a digital innovation to better spread an important social message allowed us to create a larger impact among the masses.
On the regional/ vernacular communication on the rise
The time when homogenised communication worked for different audience segments is long gone now. We are standing in the era of localised and precisely tailored messaging, not only in terms of language but also insights used and cultural nuances addressed. I think brands are quickly grasping this, some faster than others, but the shift has been witnessed in the larger advertising and marketing efforts.
In fact, we recently rolled out a TVC for Eicher Trucks and Buses that ran in the Bangladesh market. We picked up the insight that Ramadan is celebrated with great joy in the region, and the tradition of ‘Neki’ or consciously doing good deeds throughout the month, is taken up by people with utmost sincerity. So, the Bengali film titled #NekiKaSafarWithEicher not only resonated with Bangladesh’s audience because of the language and tonality, but also because it brought to life the very tradition, they believe in.
On India being a mobile-first country today and the innovations for your clients on brand messaging on the mobile and also to look at Lock screen branding
It’d be an understatement to say that the majority of communication today is happening on mobiles. With the ever-growing internet penetration and smartphones becoming increasingly accessible to the masses, this is becoming all the more true for the Indian market. This brings a dizzying range of technologically diverse platforms for us to innovate on. There is still more to explore in WhatsApp marketing, more experiments to be done with pop-up notifications, and more fun to be had with the various screen sizes.
As for lock screen branding, I think it is quite interesting as a concept but doesn’t find much application among a lot of the major market segments. It’s primarily an Android phenomena, and even then, there are only a few user types who’d actively engage with ads on their lock screens. It’s almost irrelevant for the corporate, fast-paced life of the tier 1 consumers, but finds some use cases in tier 2-3 market and with a younger audience.
On the expansion plans in 2023 and the way forward
2023 is looking good so far, having rolled out several prominent pieces of work for our clients already. Going ahead, we have plans to expand our base to Bangalore this year. With a dedicated local team, we’ll be providing specialised services to clients in the southern market.
To map our overall annual growth, we usually consider the top line, but starting this year we’re taking our targets on the bottom line, in order to map a more comprehensive picture. And we are looking forward to a robust double-digit growth.
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