Ramanuj Shastry, Nisha Singhania christen their agency 'Infectious'

Former Saatchi & Saatchi hands Ramanuj Shastry and Nisha Singhania announced the name of their advertising agency at an event held in South Mumbai last evening. Their venture is called 'Infectious' - an evident play on the concept of 'ideas that spread'. This reminds one of Publicis' well-known theory of 'Contagious Ideas'.

In today's sea of creative start-ups, what makes Infectious different, afaqs! wonders. "We'll help brands do more than they say as actions speak louder than words," explains Shastry, according to whom the agency will be positioned as a media-agnostic, 'do-agency' as opposed to a 'say-agency'.

"We want to fill the world with 'acts' for brands," he adds.

The firm will be built on what the founders term a 'collaborative model', in which the agency members will be viewed less as staff and more as co-collaborators. At the moment, there are eight collaborators on board. "Doesn't matter if they are product designers, people from IIT or musicians; finally we are all collaborators," shares Singhania, further explaining the concept. She adds that the agency will avoid gauging its success from a mere 'size' perspective and will thus, "not be part of every other pitch out there," unlike most creative start ups.

Infectious already has around three clients on board, one of which is Ubqool.com, an education-centric portal promoted by Jay Mehta and Juhi Chawla. The agency's work for this brand, including an identity-revamp, will be released across media, shortly.

Shastry, who will man the creative front at Infectious, was chief creative officer, Saatchi & Saatchi, while Singhania, who will head the business and strategic planning side of things at the agency, worked as general manager, Saatchi & Saatchi, before the duo quit -- in close succession -- to begin work on their own venture.

Nowadays, marketers looking to work with creative start-ups have a fleet to choose from. Earlier this year, Sudarshan Banerjee, former director, business development, DDB Mudra Group and executive vice-president and head, DDB Mudra Ahmedabad and Ayan Chakraborty, former chief growth officer, Percept/H, joined hands with a few like-minded industry peers to launch Utopeia, a 'retro' agency.