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Back in 2019, when Sarthak Nahar, Somil Jain, Ayush Vyas, and Ankit Kushwah were in their last year of engineering, they dreamt of turning entrepreneurs by offering value-driven creative strategies to their customers. They had a clear vision, where they wanted to solve a problem in the industry with effective creative solutions. And, that’s how Egniter was born. A creative agency that is a one-stop shop for holistic online marketing solutions.

Egniter’s range of services includes SEO, SMM & SEM, content creation, web design and development, email marketing, among other services.

Helping brands with value-driven digital strategies

The Indore-based startup works as a value-driven digital strategy company whose customised services can help brands gain a competitive edge. “Egniter is a creative agency where we connect brands to their targeted audience and help them in bridging communication gaps between the company and the customers,” says Sarthak, one of the co-founders of the Egniter.

“Consider the example of a rocket shooting into space. It requires a speed of 11km/sec to take off from the Earth’s atmosphere. Similarly, our brands also require a similar type of push in the form of marketing and branding strategies, to reach the zenith. That’s how we ended up calling our company Egniter — we ignite our customers’ businesses while helping them to enhance their market presence and boost their audience reach,” explains Ankit.

Egniter believes in blending insights and strategies to create digital products for forward-thinking organisations, leading to a wide range of services categorised under branding, marketing, and development.

Looking at the company’s initial days, Sarthak says the team started with just a few services, but they soon realised that if they want to capture a bigger market share, they would have to extend their services to explore new avenues like graphic designing, video editing, motion graphics, cinematography, photography. “We understood that by including singers, rappers, beatboxers, music producers and content creators, we could fetch better results for our clients,” he adds.

While delving deeper into the services offered by Egniter, the team says that the concept of social thinking is central to their website design. Explaining this, Ankit added “We got the phrase ‘social thinking’ added to our website as brands and customers consider marketing to be a major exercise. However, at Egniter we consider marketing to be an every day exercise, and not rocket science. We prefer to take a brand into the social life of a person to make it prominent in the long run. India has a shortage of branding agencies, and most of them don’t realise the difference between marketing and branding. Thus, we want to get recognised as a branding agency, where we create brands that have the potential to drive impact over the long run”.

While browsing through the website of Egniter another interesting concept that’s bound to capture one’s attention is the ‘Building brands between 1 am-3 am’ feature. When asked about it , Somil explains the thought behind it. “Creativity through content is the key factor that drives startups or major companies. Generally, our days are packed with meetings and daily chores. However, we often feel that our creativity strikes best between 1 am and 3 am. The mind is free to think and imagine, and that’s how we build the best brand strategies.”

Egniter’s success can be credited to a dedicated team of creative professionals who are always striving towards building a successful brand. Talking about what sets Egniter apart, Sarthak says that the problem with most marketing and branding agencies is that they create content monotonously and end up prioritising consistency over quality. “While we have a client on onboard, we care about the quality of the content in an intangible way, in almost every aspect, be it video, hiring people, client pitching, etc. Our creativity and quality content makes us stand out.”

The vision of four college students ultimately turned out to be a successful brand. However, the road to success was not an easy one. Given their inexperience, it took a while for the team to convince people to believe in their work. “No company or client was ready to invest in us. However, the COVID-19 pandemic offered a unique opportunity to us as more brands started exploring options in digital marketing. We had clients pouring in. Now we have clients across multiple industries and that remains a striking factor for our growth.”, says Ankit.

Targeting clients on a pan-India level

“We had a vision for growth in India, and a major part of our clientele base includes Indian companies. Thus, the .in domain name was an obvious choice owing to its authenticity and how it strengthened our attachment to the country. We wanted to infuse all these feelings into our brand,” says Ankit, while explaining why the team opted for a .in domain name.

“We are targeting clients across India, as we feel that there are certain brands which need a good set of marketing and branding strategies to explore global opportunities. Thus, the .in domain name extension was a major help in targeting these clients”, added Sarthak.

Ankit also feels that startups/small businesses can acquire an edge over bigger corporations by opting for the .in domain, as it is easily available and is cost-effective.

The National Internet Exchange for India (NIXI) is helping many businesses across the country to get a .in or .Bharat domain. Enterprises irrespective of their scale and size can avail a .in domain with the help of NIXI. It is affordable and can be availed in more than 22 languages for businesses coming from all regions of the country.

How Egniter is balancing growth and revenue

“We are a bootstrapped startup and didn’t have any funds to raise. We started with a small customer base, and for the first eight months couldn’t generate any revenue. We got our first cheque from a client after offering free services for eight months. Since then we have witnessed massive growth over the past two years, mounting to almost 240% more than the last year”, says Ankit.

Egniter has roped in several major honchos as part of its clientele and wishes to add more names in the future. “Currently, we have 18+ team members, who are working either from the office or remotely. We are looking for talented professionals on a pan-India level. and want to recruit more creative minds who are enthusiastic about working with a startup.“

Delving deeper into the company’s plans. Ankit didn’t rule out expansion in other cities as part of Egniter’s vision. “We are also working towards boosting our sales and revenue figures over the next six months,” says Ankit.

The ‘Shaping India Inc’s Online Growth’ series chronicles the journeys of startups and SMEs in India and how creating an online presence on the .in or .Bharat domain powered their success stories.