When you think ‘digital marketing’, what are the names that come to mind? Chances are they will be global agencies, or offshoots or acquisitions of global companies. Now, there is a new contender which has quietly grown over the last nine years to become arguably one of India’s largest independent digital marketing companies. This dark horse was adjudged ‘Fastest Growing Agency’ by Agency Reporter, and ‘Digital Agency of the Year’ by Advertising Club of Bangalore in 2022. They also set a new benchmark for managing Rs900 crore of digital media spends in 2021, managing almost 4 per cent of the digital investments that happen in India. What makes it all the more interesting is that this rising tiger in the digital marketing world is headquartered in Chennai, with offices across India. Meteoric rise From a small beginning with clients like Dr Smilez, Social Beat went on to do work for Casa Grand, Brigade group, the Murugappa group and Randstad, after which there was no looking back. Suneil Chawla, one of the co-founders says: “We were able to identify high growth sectors and acquire clients in them to fuel our growth. Initially, it was the real estate sector with multiple engagements, then it was healthcare, gaming, BFSI, and fintech. Followed by D2C brands such as boAt and Happilo. Today, we have a diversified portfolio of large brands and businesses across sectors, but have productised a service to scale D2C brands because of their growth potential in the future”. The company has both width of management and depth of expertise to partner with brands to scale their growth using diverse platforms with creativity and innovation for better results. Says Vikas Chawla, co-founder: “We began as a social media marketing company, but quickly realised that effective digital marketing requires digital advertising for brand awareness and performance, deep content and search engine optimisation for discoverability, a tech stack for enablement and analytics, website design and ecommerce portal design and development, video content for YouTube or reels on Instagram, Facebook and so on. So, we built these capabilities with dedicated teams.” Today, the company has 75 marquee clients across the country, such as Tata Cliq, Dhani, Jaquar, Indian Terrain, Upgrad Campus, Sundaram Mutual Funds, Bharath Matrimony, Snapdeal, and many more. Next-gen marketing company Social Beat focused on hiring for attitude and potential, and skilling & nurturing for growth so that most of the core team – the senior management team – are home-grown based on the values with which the company is run. “The bedrock on which we have built the company is our values,” says Suneil. “We adopted these values when we were just about 35 teammates through an inclusive process with the seniors. Since then, the first filter in our hiring process is values, and if we find a person does not match our values, we reject them no matter how experienced they are.” The company’s values have served it well, and is the glue that bonds the team together so that their rallying cry is: ‘One heart, one beat!’ For a fast-growing company that evolved over the last nine years to be able to identify, train, nurture, upskill and retain talent in a sector starved of good talent is no mean feat. Indeed, team members who left and tested the waters elsewhere came back to Social Beat, seamlessly integrating into its culture and contributing to its growth. The company’s values are not only foundational, but the secret sauce behind its success. Today the 300-plus member team works on a hybrid work model with two days in the office. They also spread their knowledge of digital, having conducted eight ‘Digital Leadership Summits’, five of them in person and three of them virtually, with the last one in mid-2022.
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Suneil and Vikas Chawla: we have a diversified portfolio of large brands and businesses
