Wondrlab's curious global foray; to not repeat mistakes of old networks

It is astonishing how small the business world is. Ask Saurabh Varma and Jarek Ziebinski.

Varma, in 2013, was appointed the chief executive officer of Leo Burnett India and would report directly to Ziebinski who was then the president of Leo Burnett Asia Pacific.

Eleven years later, in 2024, Varma’s Wondrlab, a three-and-a-half-year-old platform-first digital network, announced its first-ever global and fifth overall acquisition – WebTalk, a B2C digital marketing agency from Warsaw, Poland.

Ziebinski played dealmaker when he set up meetings between Varma and the agency’s founder and managing director Michal Dunin, and then came on board as Wondrlab’s European chief a la Chairman of the Supervisory Board of its European Hub in Poland.

Amid those eleven years, Varma grew to lead Leo Burnett South Asia and Publics Communications India as their CEOs, while Ziebinski headed the northern, central, and eastern European markets of the French holding network before starting his management consultancy in 2022.

It was during Varma’s visit to Warsaw where he met his former boss and over a lengthy conversation over his ambition and dream, Ziebinski was sold on the potential of the Wondrlab network.

“The ambition was always to build a network, and any network of the future will not be built the way old networks were; you do not need 100 countries. You need four or five strategic locations serving global brands,” Varma summarises Wondrlab’s global ambitions.

The network has plans for five hubs right now: India, Europe, the Middle East, America, and Vietnam. The choice of Poland is an unusual one because, for many folks, especially in India, it is not the first country that comes to mind when someone thinks of acquiring a company in Europe.

Ziebinski states it is the right choice because both India and Poland have grown consistently in the last few decades, and while they don’t share geographical similarities, these are countries that offer an abundance of talent.

“The choice for Poland is the cost of winning. You can have great talent but they can be extraordinarily expensive. Poland and India have similarities in terms of very hungry talent looking to change the world, and not necessarily expensive. That is a fantastic value proposition and that is why Poland,” explains Varma.

Poland, Ziebinski says, has highly educated and well-trained talented people in the technology business, and the cyber arena. “If I would like to start my business, I'd not pick countries that are in stagnation, I'd pick countries dynamically growing and developing,” he remarks.

Wondrlab’s global foray has a principle enshrined in its leaders’ minds and that is to not repeat the mistakes legacy agency-holding networks have committed.

The digital network, for starters, tap stakes in the agencies it acquires and wants its founders to stay put and offers them minority stakes in Wondrlab. “So, of every dollar profit at the end of the year, they will get some dividend and they'll also think of the greater good of Wondrlab because they hold its shares,” remarks Ziebinski.

He also says the network does not acquire companies it needs to transform, fix, or repair. “No. We only buy the best of the best.”

And when Wondrlab goes on the hunt for the best, a major challenge it faces is the life cycle of an entrepreneur. “Networks design acquisitions for founders to exit over a three or five-year period. Our model is the opposite model,” stresses Varma.

The Wondrlab model wants founders to stay. “If the founder says 'I want to exit in three years', we cannot buy,” states the founder and CEO.  When the digital network goes into an acquisition, it employs the 40% formula: 20% growth, 20% EBITDA.

It took 10 months for the WebTalk acquisition to take shape being the first global one for Wondrlab. For Varma, “five to six months is the average time for any acquisition.”

Wondrlab has plans for 21 more such acquisitions; some of them in Poland, some in Eastern Europe, and some in America – the digital network has its eye set on the States as its next big region to enter.

And whichever company it acquires, will be around Wondrlab’s four pillars: Digital video content and community, Digital media and data, Digital business transformation, and Mar tech/Ad tech.

Ziebinski says when news broke of an Indian network acquiring a company in Warsaw, the response was positive. It is a difficult time for Poland because it is Ukraine’s neighbour which is resisting Russia’s takeover attempts in a bloody war. “We cannot allow Russia to terrorise us to that extent, that we will be paralysed by fear and stop leading our lives. We want peace and don't want war,” he stresses.

India, Varma says, is surrounded by positive energy and hope for the future, and that is the worldview we want to embrace, but he will never go to Indian clients and ask them to work with Wondrlab just because it is an Indian network.

“I want clients to be inclined towards Wondrlab because of the value we create for brands.”