“Our outlook is that of coexistence”: Django Digital’s Shivang Shah and Aashay Shah

“Our outlook is that of coexistence”: Django Digital’s Shivang Shah and Aashay Shah

The founders talk about the agency coming together, and more.

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Mumbai: Amongst the glut of agencies that have launched in the past few years, Django Digital is a promising integrated digital solution provider founded in 2019 by the entrepreneurial duo Shivang Shah and Aashay Shah. To put it simply, Django means ‘Digitally awakening brands through social, e-commerce and influencer networking’.

Aashay and Shivang started out this venture right out of their living room and today, they have grown the business exponentially. In a day and age where the digital space is scattered with content, Django Digital is creating clutter-breaking solutions. It has transformed into one of the most promising agencies which is successfully bridging the gap between brands and ‘the right communication’. Driven by passion, inspired by excellence, and backed by Schbang, a leading communications agency in the country, Django hit the ground running in its entrepreneurial journey.

Its success can be marked by a significant 7.5x increase in its turnover since its inception.

Started less than two years ago, Django Digital has established itself as one of the leading start-up agencies that houses a roster of extraordinary clients ranging across industries. Their clientele includes brands like Storia Foods, White Owl Brewery, Future Life, BookMyShow, Jio Fiber, Fevikwik, Carmesi, Society Tea, Skinnsi, Prodapt, Aditya Birla Capital Health Insurance to name a few.

Another factor that makes it stand out amongst its industry peers is that they make it a point to work with owner-led brands where the founders are equally involved in the decision-making process. This has helped the agency to garner first-hand knowledge of an array of industries. These varied and extensive experiences and learnings have given them unparalleled insight into all major target audiences which in turn help them to empathise with anyone for any given brands.

The agency assists brands with solutions for business challenges by creating impactful strategies, managing their social media, bringing the right influencer associations to the table, curating engaging content, branding and designing, developing websites, assisting in media buying or performance marketing, and of course, leading the brand through the photo and video content space. Django houses a unique in-house content production studio that helps drive quality content through experimentation & allows the agency to be flexible with several formats of deliverables offered to clients.

In recent years, there has been an exponential rise of influencer marketing. Adapting to this growing trend and tapping into the power that this tool holds, the agency also launched another entity called Django Influencers. This enables them to identify the best content creators for the brands and provide authentic and cost-effective services for modern advertising strategies.

Django also has a media buying wing or as they call it - a performance team, led by Vivek Shah who uses his industry experience to drive stronger ROI for brands. This wing has been formed with experts from the industry coming with over 12 years of combined experience in insight-led performance campaigns. Their work can be seen mainly on FMCG, e-commerce, and B2B brands spending over $500K each month across platforms.

Django Digital is constantly adapting, evolving, updating, and most importantly, bringing alive a creative and young culture to the agency space. Its vision is to continue to awaken brands digitally and expand its footprint across the country. As a design-first agency, they believe that campaigns should evolve from creative and innovative thinking, bringing the most off-beat solutions to brands.

In an interaction with Indiantelevision.com, founders Shivang Shah and Aashay Shah talk about the agency’s journey, surviving the pandemic, competing with the advertising industry biggies, and much more.

Edited excerpts:

On the story behind launching Django Digital, and its journey

Aashay: Shivang and I have always wanted to start our own business from the very beginning. We have always had an entrepreneurial spirit in us since we were young. Over the years, it took shape as some innovative ventures that we launched. Right after college, we began working at different companies primarily in the digital space. While acquiring knowledge about the trades, we identified a gap in the market for a digital agency that could provide the desired output of a larger agency on an economical budget. So after four years of relentless hard work in a fairly young industry, with an aim of awakening brands digitally through social, e-commerce and influencer networking, we decided to start our own agency that provides customised digital solutions.

On launching Django Digital at the onset of the pandemic, and as a start-up how did you make it through that tough time

Aashay: The pandemic was good and bad for us. It was good because it really drilled the need for digital marketing into the minds of several business owners and stakeholders. As a result, the industry was no longer what it was during the pre-Covid days. This dynamic scenario has changed our perspective toward brand strategies. There was also a drastic increase in digital spends. In a quest to navigate through the pandemic, we had to adapt. Pre-existing plans had to be reworked entirely to fit in the covid-related communications. As per expectation, our change in strategy to adapt to the situation really worked in our favour. We opened up newer avenues like website development, influencer marketing, etc which made it possible for businesses to meet their objectives within the limitations of the lockdown scenario. As a result, we successfully sailed through. However, training and scaling became super challenging due to remote working. To combat this issue, we decided to change our hiring strategy and work with experienced talent in the digital space.

On getting into this space in spite of a plethora of digital agencies that exist in the industry, and the kind of a gap did you see in the market that you seek to fill

Aashay: We want to do radically different work. We want to work with brands and talent that are simply put, not referencing the advertising past. We believe that the right workforce can create wonders. What makes Django unique is the mix of millennial and Gen Z workforce that are the backbone of the agency, fostering a culture of creative freedom and minimal hierarchy. We have scaled our agency which houses over 40 young-blooded employees striving to create exceptional work and make strides in the industry. Another factor that makes us stand out amongst our industry peers is that we make it a point to work with owner-led brands where the founders are equally involved in the decision-making process. The Indian audience has evolved and with our Millennial/GenZ talent pool, we’re changing the way brands are perceived by audiences. We also know that the landscape has changed for good, with the networks not being able to command the same price they were, and with brands realising the possibility of doing good work at a fair cost. That’s the gap we’re trying to solve.

On making a place for yourself amongst the Wunderman Thompson’s, Havas’ and Dentsu’s of the world and competing against them

Aashay: Being a young agency, we have already established a place in the market and upscaled phenomenally. Currently, we are still in the process of expanding further on. That being said, we don’t want to compete with the big 3s at the moment, we plan on co-existing with them and maybe joining hands with them if at all given a chance. Our outlook is that of coexistence.

On influencer marketing as a space, and with Django Influencers how do you wish to change the dynamics of this industry

Shivang: Influencer marketing is a constantly evolving faction of the industry. Strategies adopted just two-three years back don’t work anymore. Consumers are more perceptive than ever in the current times and so they see through paid collabs. Moreover, with the introduction of AI in the influencer marketing scene, the dynamics of operations have changed. When it comes to Influencer collaborations, we believe in long-term influencer associations where the influencers themselves also truly believe in the product/brand. At Django Digital, we believe in the idea of quality over scale. Django Influencers have successfully executed campaigns with brands like Jio Fiber, Fevikwik, FutureLife, Storia Foods, and more.

On your media buying arm, and how do you utilise digital, in its various forms, to tailor-make relevant campaigns/communication for your clients/brands

Aashay: We’re super bullish when it comes to media buying. The majority of the digital industry revenue is driven by media buying. There are so many avenues that can be tapped into, and we’re doing that at all funnels of the journey. We also strongly believe in WhatsApp as a remarketing channel and are leveraging that across our brands. Traditional advertising spends are reducing for sure and digital is all set to take over the larger piece of the pie in 2023. However, the need for it is still going to be there. With a proven track record of higher ROAS (Return on Advertising Spends) we have built a solid proof of concept with Django Media, our media buying arm.

On how digital has toppled the brand and media strategy game, wherein earlier brand strategies and media strategies used to be heavily TV-led

Aashay: The concept of brand and media strategy is one such field that has been constantly evolving. Before, media strategies would focus more on getting the consumers to buy the product or in other words sales oriented. For example, if you observe tv-led media strategies in the past, Bollywood celebrities would generally play a major role in promoting the product because the Indian audience then were Bollywood freaks. However, marketing and strategising now have diversified majorly, it's not just about promoting products anymore. Importance is given to how well the brand’s ideologies can connect with the brand's audience and what message is portrayed to the consumers. In other words, contrary to the TV-Led campaigns in the earlier times, brand and media strategizing in the present times revolve around creating a meaningful impact on the audience utilising all means and platforms not limiting to just TV-Led platforms. In the current times, one can spend as little as Rs 1000 per day to market their brand to a very specific audience. It is efficient and impactful because it isn’t a blanket targeting approach and tracking ROI is far more effective. This is obviously a no-brainer.

On the trends and innovations that are expected to disrupt the overall advertising, marketing and digital market this year

Aashay: AI tools, all sorts of them are creeping into our feeds and searches. Making use of these tools is going to be critical in terms of evolution. Quick Commerce as a channel is seeing good growth and should be actively looked into by brand teams.

On the kind of expansion plans that you are looking at for Django Digital

Shivang & Aashay: Django Digital has always been big on expansion and scaling. When we started off in the year 2019 we had a strength of just three people that would run operations on a daily basis. Today we have a strength of over 70 like-minded individuals that passionately pursue and develop projects/handle operations with an aligned mission to provide quality media solutions and content for brands. Our team consistently produces quality results due to their insatiable curiosity and thirst for innovation. Moreover, we’re also setting up our Hyderabad wing and it should be operational soon. It is a great market with multiple startups as well as established brands, and a lack of good agencies. With our successful expansion into Hyderabad we plan to connect with numerous other like-minded brands and help their businesses scale further on into bigger markets.

On Your vision and way forward for Django Digital

Shivang & Aashay: Our vision for the next three years is to do impactful work in the fields of content, branding & media. There is a strict adherence to the concept of quality > quantity. The idea is to create crisp content that resonates wholly with the consumers. We are also focused on slowly developing our PR segment which would help in reach-amplification in the long run. Currently, we don't want to blitzscale, we’d rather do things right.