Dhananjay Arora set up one of India’s earliest full-service Digital Agency, Kwebmaker. Dhananjay embarked on this digital journey back in 1998 when the industry was still at its most nascent stage in India.
The agency today offers coherent and bespoke solutions for brands and businesses providing services across the digital spectrum including – Web, Ecommerce, Mobile Apps and Digital Marketing that includes SEO, SEM and Social Media.
Kwebmaker recently ventured in AR/VR, Blockchain and Video content services too with an aim to keep evolving and provide clients with state-of-the-art IT and Digital solutions.
Dhananjay Arora – Founder & CEO, Kwebmaker, speaks on the digital landscape, Kwebmakers journey and more.
Kwebmaker started in 1998, when most of us did not know what digital is all about, and then to now, how has the journey been?
It was about 1996-1997 when the Internet came to India and somehow since then, it was clear to me that the Internet will be the next big thing to happen not just to India, but to the world. India and the world had already seen the agricultural age and the industrial age, and we were on the cusp of the Information age. This thought was somehow obvious and prompted me to start the agency.
Since, then India has seen many waves of digital evolution, with the growth of social media platforms, app ecosystem, the advent of 4G and now 5G, and more importantly is now seeing the usage and growth of data technology with AI, AR, VR and newer unexplored technologies. While the adaption by users is fast, the still needs to have massive disruption for India to truly be a digitally independent.
If I may try to sum-up the journey, I will say it has been nothing but a constant learning experience. Especially with the continuous and quick evolution of IT, it has been a journey of constant change, learning, challenges, and a humble satisfaction of the achievements.
The pandemic has ushered in a new normal and seeing a huge surge in Digital consumption, how are you seeing this?
Yes absolutely. The new normal has forced users and businesses to not just consume but USE DIGITAL to manage their day to day activities and businesses. From a marketing perspective it’s a great time to be on Digital as more and more users are online for longer periods of time. The buying patterns are hugely getting tilted towards the online more (since users want to avoid offline stores and purchases as much as possible). It is a great time for users to be online as there is more content getting generated to consume and a great time to have your brands online since more users are consuming content online. It’s a perfect match for both User and Businesses to use DIGITAL and create a win-win phenomenon.
There was a time when boutique agencies were the norm, but a decade ago Agencies consolidated and became full-service agencies, what are the challenges faced by standalone agencies?
Both boutique agencies and consolidated agencies under a group have their pros and cons. Consolidated agencies can have a lot of market penetration and hence a bigger chunk of the revenue/business, with better buying power (for media) but boutique or stand-alone agencies like us are more personal, intimate and agile in their nature.
Kwebmaker has on-purpose reminded a stand-alone agency as that gives us the flexibility and freedom to run our operations in our own terms and culture. We are far more one-on-one with our clients and that works for us as that is what our clients expect from us, a highly involved, collaborative and team-based approach rather than a typical client/vendor approach.
Data is the new oil, how will Kwebmaker up the usage of Data Science for their clients especially for the Indian market.
Data Science is a very wide term and has multiple applications to it. We use it as a Custom Tool for a lot of our clients especially when we are creating complex and transactional websites or apps for our clients. Simply put we understand the client business, ask all the possible questions regarding their users and user journey/habits, etc., get inputs of all the ready data they may have, put this together, clean the data and try to make objective and scientific conclusions on user behaviour or journey or habits or buying patterns and then draw up a model or models that we think will work for the client.
Where possible we conduct an A / B testing at a test environment before deploying the final version for the client. Of course, data science is a continuous activity, and the additional data keeps helping us make better predictions for our clients.
How small businesses and setups can look into smart ways of growing and being back on track using newer technologies?
Today all businesses and especially small businesses need to go ONLINE. As mentioned earlier, their customers (whether B2B or B2C) are Online. Even traditional and B2B businesses that would stick to offline means of doing business, e.g. Textile, Jewellery, Realty are using online a tool to reach out to new and old buyers. Small Kirana Stores and Home-based catering businesses are using apps like WhatsApp and Instagram to market and take orders. Mom-and-pop businesses are building simple brand or eCommerce websites at small budgets to promote their sales and accept payments online.
All small businesses should explore the right mix of (a) building websites or eCommerce websites and (b) market themselves using social media (mainly Facebook and Instagram) and include Search (SEO as well as simple paid ads on google).
What is the way forward for Kwebmaker and where do you see yourself in the next 3 years?
We at Kwebmaker want to focus on being a Digital Transformer. We love to partner with businesses of all sizes from start-ups to fortune companies in and helping them in truly digitising their businesses and that is where we want to be seen as the industry leader. A company that partners with you, understands your business, applies data science, comes up with innovative solutions to digitise the processes (thus reduce costs and increase efficiency and profits) and build your business into a truly Digital and IT run business.
We aim to be seen as an IT Digital Transformation specialist and not just another digital agency. Apart from being an industry leader in India we are perpetually looking at exploring new geographic markets and expanding our geographic footprint specially to nations with growing economies.
