Sign up for afaqs! Newsletters
Kolkata-based No Nirvana Digital Aspire to be Go-To Marketing Partner for All Tech Startups
In conversation with Anirban Sengupta of No Nirvana Digital.
What is your vision for NoNirvana Digital? And what will be our focus areas here?
We are a bootstrapped company. We believe in being a "problem-solver" and tailoring the methods for our clients, which has produced successful outcomes. We work with clients across a variety of tech sectors, including SaaS, finance, e-commerce, and healthtech. No Nirvana has a unique "strategy first" approach while working with clients, emphasizing developing the client's growth strategy. We believe that different clients might not be able to use the same digital products. As a result, we spend a lot of time with clients getting to know their business segments and offering suitable solutions.
Even while startup businesses have many distinctive products to offer, we found that they often lack the tools needed to interact with their clients. This restricts their growth. We are committed to finding a cost-effective solution to close this communication gap for the clients.
We have always positioned NoNirvana Digital as an extended team for our clients. We want to grow while keeping our position intact. The long-term vision would be to become the marketing partner of choice for all tech startups in the world who are striving to grow fast and economically. SEO, PPC (Google Ads), and content marketing are the three main areas of concentration for our clients.
What kind of brand target audience is on your platform?
Effective marketing campaigns don't always reach everyone. One must connect with the people who will profit from your offering to create an effective digital marketing strategy. The target audience is determined by demographics, interests, lifecycles, and even geolocation. Since IT startups make up the majority of our customers, we attempt to target specific audiences to raise client lifetime value and conversion rates in the IT industry. Knowing the target audiences for our clients allows us to personalize their communication to encourage sales and bind customers to their brands to foster loyalty and trust.
What is exciting for you currently?
The value of privacy is being recognized more widely. As a result, the task of a marketer gets more challenging. We are witnessing the rising importance of first-party data in digital marketing (or data that your users have consensually provided you with).
The Data Protection Bill of 2021 has established a new tone and tenure for data processing by requiring enterprises. It enables users to implement a consent manager platform to gain, withdraw, evaluate, and manage consent in an accessible, transparent, and interoperable manner. Though the concept appears fresh, it is unknown territory. Furthermore, with the fast adoption of cutting-edge technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, it would be worthwhile to track and research how the current set of legislation would be applied to frameworks based on decentralization and anonymization. Meanwhile, companies should consider undertaking periodic audits and reviews of their privacy policies to better visualize the categories of data collected, its movement within the company, storage timings, and locations, and to take remediation measures to fill any loopholes they find.
There is a lot that needs to be done to get companies ready for non-intrusive marketing. Currently, this has been my personal area of research interest.
You have been on an expansion journey. How hard was it to sail through the last two years while adding new verticals and expanding the team?
We are currently serving clients from five different countries, namely, India, the United States, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Canada, Luxembourg, and Ukraine. The majority of our growth has come through client referrals. The team strength today is about 15. It could potentially increase in the next few months. In October 2020, the company was established. As a result, our entire voyage coincides with the pandemic and other unknown factors. It has not been easy, but we have survived. The path ahead will be bumpy as well. Companies are already slashing marketing budgets in anticipation of the impending recession. We will endeavor to address the issues as they arise.
What are the gaps you have identified that remain to be filled? And do you plan to acquire any agencies?
While we have been proactively working on creating robust processes and reusable solutions, lots can still be done. We need to eventually build a scalable delivery model. Due to the lack of scalability, we are only able to accept 50% of the prospects who want to work with us. I would definitely want to improve that.
A few months back, we launched a division, Your Press Buddy, that's focused on getting guaranteed press for companies. This business has been growing pretty slowly — I would like to dedicate some effort to growing this too.
There's no plan to acquire any agency. However, we are always looking to strategically partner with other agencies with complementary expertise.
In the last two years, India has seen three waves of pandemics. What has been the impact of these intermittent lockdowns and changing guidelines on the agency and the overall industry?
We think it has worked out well for digital marketing agencies. Firstly, due to the pandemic, the world at large has witnessed the digital transformation, which by default has moved dollars from offline marketing budgets to digital marketing allocations. We no longer need to "sell" the significance of going digital. Everyone is aware that this is the best way forward.
Secondly, companies are more comfortable working with partners who are unable to provide local support—this opens up the market considerably. Even though we've only been in business for a short time, we've already worked with clients in India, the United States, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Canada, Luxembourg, and Ukraine.
About the Founder:
Anirban Sengupta is the founder of NoNirvana Digital, a strategy and digital marketing consulting agency that offers marketing solutions to tech companies, especially early-stage startups. With more than ten years of experience in marketing, analytics, and technology, Anirban works to drive impact through digital marketing. He can be reached at anirban@nonirvanadigital.com