Atul Hegde, CEO, Ignitee Digital Solutions Pvt Ltd

Atul Hegde began his career in 1996 as the first employee of a start-up advertising agency, Euro RSCG, where he had a meteoric rise going from trainee to Vice-President in just six years. At 26, he was the youngest member of the core team at Euro RSCG that took the agency to Rs 300 crore in billings in a four-year span. He had successful stints in client servicing, account planning and was heading a business unit at age 24.

He moved on to head a small creative boutique, Vyas Giannetti Creative (VGC), in 2003. He took over as Chief Operating Officer and was the youngest agency head in the country at 29. In the next four and a half years that he spent at VGC, Hegde took the company from a Rs 15-crore operation to a whooping Rs 200 crore.

In April 2008, he took over as CEO of Ignitee (formerly known as Connecturf), one of the largest digital media agencies in India. The challenge of making Ignitee the undisputed leader in the digital media space and mastering the new medium is what he lives by today.

Hegde has worked on some of the biggest brands like Philips, Aditya Birla Group, The Times of India, Discovery Networks, SBI Mutual Funds, Birla Sun life Financials, Air France, BPL Mobile, Kinetic Motors, Religare, Sony & Max television, Indian Cricket League, Indian Express Group, Tata Corporate, the Hinduja Group, Ashok Leyland, and HDFC Bank, among many others.

In conversation with exchange4media’s Robin Thomas, Hegde speaks about the digital media scene in India, how to make best use of the slowdown period and the transition of Connecturf to Ignitee.

Q. You do not agree with a 35 per cent growth in the digital space, but you expect the growth to be much more… We at Ignitee had a very clear target in mind that we have to grow at about 200 per cent, and hence, we chalked out a list of things to do in order to achieve the 200 per cent growth. And it really does not matter at what pace the market is growing, because the pace at which the market is growing is all people’s perception. I believe that most of those people who talk about market growth talk only from media point of view, so they are talking about digital media spends. Therefore, for a digital media agency like us, the media pie is just one of the pies, so when I talk about the digital market, I talk about the whole market. New media is not just about media spends, there is a lot more than buying media, and for us, that is the real market.

Q. Other than re-branding the name Ignitee, what else has changed in the organisation? Actually everything else changed before we changed the name, because we did not want to do just the cosmetic change as brand changes cannot happen only by changing a name. Therefore, internal processes changed first, our entire approached changed to a very brand approach, and we got our entire senior team in place. We launched a couple of new offices, thus increasing the breadth of our services; we also increased the width of our services in terms of services that we offer, we revitalised our entire search function, we revitalised our tech function, and only after having done all this did we change the name. So, for us it was really coming of age as an entire new organisation, which is why we strongly felt that we cannot take half measures here.

Q. After being in the news in 2006-07, 2008 was relatively silent... Last year has been completely a rebuilding process for us. In fact, it has been our best year as yet in terms of sheer growth that we have seen. We have expanded our offices, we are now in six locations – Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, where we launched three months’ back, and Dubai, where we launched our operations about four months’ back. So, it has been a phenomenal year in terms of expansion for us. Expansion does not mean going out and hiring more people, but also getting business, getting offices, we have also increased the basket of services that we offer. We were really ambitious, but did not expect the success Ignitee would get in the market.

Q. What are the changes witnessed post the re-branding of Ignitee? Everything changed before we changed our name, we did not want to do a mere cosmetic change. I believe brand expansions cannot happen by mere changing of name; internal processes changed first. Our entire approach changed to a very brand approach, we have got our senior teams in place, we launched a number of offices and expanded the breadth of our services, we also increased the width of our services, revitalised our entire search functions, revitalised our tech functions, and only then did we change our name.

Q. Ignitee had partnered with the Congress party for the Assembly Elections in 2008. What was the experience like? No national political party has so far taken the digital medium seriously, and the tie-up with the Congress party has been the first of its kind where a political party was looking at the Internet to reach out. Earlier, no national political party had used the Internet as a serious medium. This we did in partnership with our associate company Crayons. While Crayons helped in the offline activities, we helped the party in their online initiatives. It was extremely successful. We we had worked with the Congress party in Delhi as well as Rajasthan, and the party won in both these states, which was like icing on the cake for us. The response to this campaign was beyond expectations.

Q. You were on an expansion spree till recently. What is your next target? And what are your priorities in 2009? We launched in Dubai and Hyderabad around four months back. We are looking at opening two more offices in the next 12 months, but we have not shortlisted the location or region as yet. We are also looking at a couple of alliances with offline companies to offer digital solutions to their clients, so expansion is not just in terms of geography, but also in terms of new services that we are looking to get into, for instance, Crayons and Dentsu, which have been extremely successful. From the mobile perspective, we are looking at rural markets as a huge growth opportunity waiting to be tapped.

Q. What are trends to watch out for in the digital medium? The only trend we want to see as an organisation is that the digital medium is as accepted as any other mass medium today, and the only trend we want to create or look out for is get the maximum number of categories on board for this kind of medium, at least start and experience this type of medium.

Q. Will the partnership continue in the 2009 General Elections? Post the success in these two states, we plan to go pan-India in the General Elections and see a much larger play in the Internet space. Barack Obama had used the Internet as a primary medium, but India has still got a long way to go in this. But the fact is that political parties are taking this category seriously in the 2009 General Elections, which is a big plus for us. Though it is not the main medium, but it certainly is a part of the media mix, which itself is a huge achievement. I am sure that during the General Elections there will be at least 4-5 political parties that will be using this medium. And yes, for the General Elections we will continue campaigning for the Congress.

Q. How has the current economic crisis been treating Ignitee and the digital medium? I don’t think the slowdown has affected the digital medium at all, at least, we have not seen it. Overall, the affect on India has been far less than in any other country; I think there is far too much noise about it than reality. We see the economic slowdown as a great opportunity, because at times when marketing budgets are under the scanner, people will turn to more accountable and cost effective mediums. We are bullish about this and want to use this opportunity to educate the clients about the benefits of the digital medium and to invest in this medium at this point of time, and we are seeing it happen.

We are also seeing that traditional marketers, too, are now ready to pull out some budget from the offline medium and invest in this medium, which is very heartening news for us. For a long period of time, this category was very dependent on the financial sector, and I believe the meltdown, especially that in the financial sector, is going to force agencies to find new categories to come on board, so that again is going to help us in the long term. Therefore, in a way the global economic slowdown is a blessing in disguise for us. I believe we are going to be smarter in the way we work; we are going to be smarter in the way we go about and convince the marketers about the medium. So, evangelising of this medium is going to happen.

Q. What are your vision and priorities for 2009 as CEO of Ignitee? We want to be among the top two players in the market. In terms of pure business objective, we were quite clear that we want to go back and regain our market share, our leadership position, and our thought leadership position, which again will take some time and is happening. As an organisation per se, we have gone out and invested in new markets. So, we are going to spread the breadth and width of our services, we are going to spread the breath of our actual locations and are looking at opening a few more offices. We are looking at adding a lot more in terms of talent pool, we have already grown in numbers and today we have a 100-plus staff strength.

So, it is really strengthening of the organisation in our day to day work. The biggest objective, however, is to build one new category for this medium every month, and for us growing in the market is the single biggest objective. We need to get more and more categories coming into this medium. This medium, which is more than 10 years old, is still called ‘new medium’, that needs to be changed. There is a lot more that the digital medium has to offer and that’s really the bigger picture for us. We really have to go out and get more and more categories to come on board. The size of the activities they start with doesn’t matter, I am confident that once they are on this category, they are going to stick, grow and expand, and that’s the bigger opportunity for us.

As for the growth targets for 2009, we are looking at another 200 per cent for the next three months, we are targeting to close at Rs 125 crore this year and we confident of surpassing that. The kind of growth that we have seen is sustainable and that is the best part, it is an indication of how the market is opening up. It is also an indication that if you get your product and services right, there really is a market out there for you.

Q. Has Ignitee also put a freeze on recruitments, as quite a few organisations have done because of the slowdown effects? How is Ignitee dealing with new talents? As far as Ignitee is concerned, we are on a hiring spree. However, we are very clear that we will never over hire, which would lead to a situation where we would have to look at our employees as mere numbers. But we have been constantly hiring, we have gone up from 32 people to about more than 100 in the last 6-7 months, thus we will continue our hiring and continue to building new offices. I believe this is the best time for us to actually invest. I personally believe that in the job market there was a lot of over-evaluation that was happening in the last one year, and in an overheated job market what happens is that while you don’t get good talent, the bad talent gets expensive. So, you are actually hiring bad talent at the cost of good talent. Fortunately all that is gone, which is actually good for us. So, for me that is actually a positive industry indicator. The fact that we now have access to good talent and that we can now afford good talent – that is the real bailout for us.

Q. Since Ignitee is also in search, mobile, sports, radio, print and so on, which category according to you is seeing higher growth? For me, we are putting equal focus on all our categories. For me, web development is as important as search, which in turn is as important as online buying and planning, because they all go hand in hand. So, right now we are very clear that at least in FY10, the three pillars are really about online buying and planning, search and web development, with mobile being the joker in the pack. That is something that we are developing as we go.

Q. Keeping in mind the current economic scenario, what important role can digital play for both online and offline media? Historically, whenever there was a recession or slowdown, by and large it never affected the communications industry. Therefore, I believe right now every buck that a client spends gives you far more bang than what it actually did six months back, because clutter is low right now, so you can actually be more impactful buying the same piece of medium that you could have bought six months back, and that is a great opportunity for clients. However, unfortunately, right now there is a slight panic mentality, but smart marketers are going to ride this phase and are going to see this as an opportunity, because at this point of time, your media is going to give you far more returns than what it used to give you six months’ back. And that’s really the play for enablers like us, which is to go all out and make your clients understand that at this point of time, investing in your brand is wise, because when the morale is low, that is the time when consumers want to see their brand out there. It is important that brands don’t go silent during this phase, and if you look around, the smart ones are not silent as they are capitalising on this, so you will see a lot of activities out there.