'Our aim is to digitally awaken brands through social, e-commerce & influencer networking'

Django Digital is a promising integrated digital solution provider founded in 2019 by the entrepreneurial duo Shivang Shah and Aashay Shah. In a day and age where the digital space is scattered with content, Django Digital is creating clutter-breaking solutions. A promising agency, which is successfully bridging the gap between brands and ‘the right communication’. In a conversation with exchange4media, Aashay Shah and Shivang Shah, Founders of Django Digital, talk about the entrepreneurial journey and the success story of their agency.

Edited Excerpts:

• Can you tell us a bit about the brands you work with?

What sets us apart is that we make it a point to work with owner-led brands where the founders are equally involved in the decision-making process. This has helped us in understanding specific markets better and we have been able to successfully garner first-hand knowledge of an array of industries. These varied and extensive experiences and learnings have given us unparalleled insights into all major target audiences which in turn help us to empathize with anyone for any given brand. 

To give you a gist, while we work with newer brands like Storia Foods, Fin Water, Prodapt, skinnsi, toothsi; we also work with some top players in the industry such as Jio Fiber, White Owl Brewery, BookMyShow, Society Tea, and several others.

• What is the creative aim of Django?

To put it simply, the ‘D’ in the word Django stands for Digital which means we essentially want to ‘Digitally awakening brands through social, e-commerce and influencer networking,’ which is also our mission statement and creative aim to achieve for every brand we work with.

• How is Django, as an agency, tackling issues emerging due to the second wave?

The scenario around the second wave is very different from what the pandemic was like in 2020. As an agency, our perspective, as well as our output, is to constantly evolve. We have kept our ear to the ground and have noticed several brands, influencers, businesses that are refraining from posting regular branded content on their pages and are instead advocating details on Covid19 relief requirements. As an agency with a power to influence our clients on the content going out, we have also started building a case to limit promotions for the time being and focus on Covid19-led content. While the pandemic has affected us all, Django has been able to stay afloat - we are only 15% behind our set targets that what we could have achieved, had the pandemic not occurred.

• What is the entrepreneurial journey and success story of Django?

As two young budding entrepreneurs with intense drive and passion, we both founded Django Digital in 2019. Inspired by excellence and backed by Schbang, a leading communications agency in the country, we hit the ground running in our entrepreneurial journey. Close to two years later, we have established ourselves as one of the most promising digital agencies that ensures clutter-breaking content, successfully bridging the gap between brands and ‘the right communication’. Our success can be marked with a significant 7.5x increase in turnover from our first financial year to our second. What makes us unique is the mix of millennial and Gen Z workforce that are the backbone of the agency. What started out as a team of 3 individuals, grew to 10 at the end of our first year and today, we are a strong team of 43 young-blooded employees striving to create exceptional work and make strides in the industry. We also recently got shortlisted for the Kyoorius Awards under ‘Writing for Digital & Social Media’ which we executed for Society Tea; this has, in turn, won us a ‘Baby Elephant award’ and we’re positively on our way to winning the ‘Blue Elephant award’ as well! 

• What kind of challenges did you face between the idea and execution of campaigns?

There is this one school of thought we have always followed - 'How can we make this campaign better than the other one?' which is something that's instilled in everyone at Django. On most days, clients appreciate our fresh and innovative approach to their campaigns, bringing in that youthful element. However, being a fairly new start up agency that has been in operation for only 20 months, we have sensed that clients can be slightly hesitant on sanctioning big budgets. Having said that, over time we are able to build a foundation of trust with the brands we work with and also prove ourselves as a capable agency. Moreover, being backed by Schbang as the first agency under their network, that hesitation isn't there anymore.

• Going forward, what plans do you have for Django and its future campaigns?

Django Digital is constantly adapting, evolving, updating and most importantly, bringing alive a creative and young culture to the agency space. We aim to continue doing that and at the same time, expanding our reach, in terms of brands as well as our teams. Our future campaigns will always be designed with our vision to awaken brands digitally and expand its footprint across the country. As a design-first agency, we believe that campaigns should evolve from creative and innovative thinking, which is what we will continue to do here at Django Digital. You can see more of our work here.