MUMBAI: DAN Consult, the consulting arm of Dentsu Aegis Network, has successfully scaled up winning large growth consulting assignments with corporates like Tata Unistore (Tata Group’s e-commerce venture), UAE’s leading e-commerce platform Noon.com, India’s leading regional newspaper group Rajasthan Patrika, Rajasthan’s luxury hotel group Suryagarh Hotels along with a few other clients who wish confidentiality.
DAN Consult is an integrated hub of growth consulting and marketing transformation services combining business consulting, product consulting, marketing and sales strategy, technology, data, AI, digital marketing, performance marketing and martech (marketing technology) to deliver on the business objectives of clients. The plan is to build a result focused consulting firm and fill a space today not captured by the large consulting firms or the tech companies specifically on digital growth where being hands-on is key to success.
While DAN Consult has employees dedicated to business consulting, the practice also pools entrepreneurs, leaders and CEOs internally across the DAN group and the best breed external experts who have built and scaled businesses themselves and successfully created teams on a project-by-project basis. These industry-leaders will leverage their expertise across multiple domains to not just advise on strategy, but also form campaigns, products, and infrastructure including digitisation and Artificial Intelligence or solving business problems through an innovative and disruptive process.
Lalit Bhagia has taken over as the CEO of DAN Consult. It will be the fourth entity under the DAN Performance Group, headed by Vivek Bhargava, along with the existing three companies under it – iProspect India, SVG Columbus and Merkle Sokrati.
Bhagia and Bhargava, both ex-entrepreneurs themselves will collaborate to build and scale the DAN Consult business. Bhagia has led and built the digital growth strategy for companies like Star TV and Aditya Birla Financial Services among others. Prior to Star, he was the head – APAC at Digitas where he single-handedly built and scaled Digitas across India and Southeast Asia from scratch.
Bhagia says, “With DAN Consult, we aim to deliver on business objectives and not the marketing objectives. Our business model rests on this very premise and thus we work with companies based on revenue growth using digital. In the long run, we will take a cut from the results, instead of charging fixed fees for time. This is a shift from what traditional consultants currently do and with this we hope to redefine the space. I am glad to have been chosen to create and build this business for DAN. This indeed is the next level of how agencies would evolve in the future.
Bhargava mentions, “With 1800 digital experts and the diverse talent that the network possesses, we believe we enjoy a niche to cater to the unmet demand of clients beyond what tech companies and traditional consultancies are equipped to provide. The strength, dynamism, culture, flexibility, consumer understanding and risk-taking that a network like ours possesses along with some of the best minds in the business work as a huge added advantage. With Lalit at the helm, I’m positive we will be able to deliver great value to clients through our consulting efforts.”
“The launch of DAN Consult enables our business to achieve the completion of the triumvirate of branding, media and consulting. We believe the market currently leaves scope for an offering of this nature and we are glad to introduce the consulting business under the DAN Performance Group, providing further value to our clients and working with CEOs and promoters to push the envelope through digital. Moreover, this is aligned with our One-DAN vision.” concludes Dentsu Aegis Network South Asia Chairman and CEO Ashish Bhasin.
