Ting was established in 2009, as a fully integrated Creative and Digital Agency comprising a team of 325+ with offices in Mumbai, Chennai & London.
At ting, the core offerings are divided into 6 distinct verticals. While each vertical has a dedicated specialist team we’re seamlessly integrated to provide a completely digital and creative ecosystem to their partners.
- Dodos (Branding and Packaging)
- Qode (Website, Mobile Applications &Martech Solutions)
- tingX (Digital Advertising & Social Media Marketing)
- Turbine (Online Paid Media Management, Performance Marketing & SEO Solutions)
- CMYK (Omni-channel Creative Communications)
- Studios (Video Production, Photography and Motion Graphics)
Aadil Mehta – Ting in an exclusive conversation with MediaNews4U talks about completing 12 years, the HR practices, and the way forward…
Congratulations on completing 12 years, what have been the challenges?
When we started out, getting our first few clients was challenging. When we started getting the clients, onboarding good talent was tough. Operating in a competitive space, the only way to win is through consistency in delivery– and that was our next hurdle. Every challenge overcome was like leveling up and from that we learned that, as a company evolves, so do these challenges, and through them is presented an opportunity to learn and grow.
In the last 12 yrs. how has the growth trajectory been?
It’s been very smooth. We’ve not had any J-curve moment; we have been compounding our growth consistently. We like it this way. While we have grown our revenues roughly about 150 times since year one, we have never really chased any number. We always stuck to the principle, “slow is smooth and smooth is fast”
Ting’s USP in this cluttered market?
Our industry has extremely low entry barriers, so it’s always tough to gain competitive advantages. Someone is always coming hard at you. We have focused on bringing in a lot of integration amongst the services we offer. This allows us to become brand custodians and since we’ve scaled enough there’s a good depth of experience in skill in various integrated services that we offer. So, our USP is to be able to control a lot of moving parts for our clients in a seamless manner. Other than that, we’re quite quick with our deliveries which helps our clients have a lot of faith in us.
How did you navigate through the pandemic and what was that one mantra that kept you and your employees positive?
We announced our hierarchy of priorities on day one of the pandemics – health and safety. No one will be forced to work from office even when permissible by law.
The financial security of our teams was second on the list. We had committed to our team that we’ll not do pay cuts or lay off anyone.
These two decisions made people work with ease. It’s remarkable how the team pulled off some miracles while it looked impossible. I think steady performance through the pandemic, particularly when the chips were down helped us keep the momentum and positivity going for the teams.
With brands turning to digital for targeted communication to their TG, how do you see this trend?
It was already happening before the pandemic, now it’s become a norm. The whole globe is getting digitized at the speed of knots so there’s a great tailwind in our space and this trend will only explode further in the coming future.
As an organization, how did you make the work culture and HR employee-friendly?
We have a ‘minimum government, maximum governance approach’. Ting has always loved its people and we’ve ensured they know this. People work here freely without any fear. They build some great connections. It’s a bit philosophical, but great cultures are built when all stakeholders involved are interested in giving and not taking. For this to happen, we had to build a culture of giving top-down and over time, it’s become our DNA.
Where do you see TING in the next 3 years?
As I said earlier, there are tremendous tailwinds, we see ourselves doubling in size in 3 years. But we also see a lot of changes in the way we operate. Tech has to play a huge role for us in the future to improve our processes and efficiency. Future tech (Voice, AI, AR, Low code-no code) are areas we believe will be core propositions in all our solutions going forward. So that journey has started and seems quite interesting. I think we’ll have a flight to quality and focus less on quantum. So, the next three years are extremely, extremely exciting.
Can you share with our readers some key campaigns of TING?
In the recent past, we were a part of the nationwide JioFiber launch. We’ve been involved in all of Amazon’s big sales through the last 5 years. We’ve recently won awards for our work with Oxfam. The campaign was #TruthAboutTea. We’ve won several awards for our work with Sunrisers Hyderabad. Each IPL season, we’ve managed some great campaigns like #RiseWithUs. For Sun Network, we’ve performed incredibly well, through a yearlong campaign on YouTube, extending the views from 900 million to over 10 billion, this is perhaps the best we’ve performed in the last 12 years.
