Exclusive Interview with Rikki Agarwal, Co-founder, Chief Business, and Operating Officer of Blink Digital

New technologies and features change user expectations from a digital product, like a website or an app. It also affects how they interact with it changes. As a result, UX design standards also evolve. The main focus of UX design is to adapt to ever-changing trends to meet consumer demands and boost user engagement and satisfaction. Blink Digital is a full-service independent digital agency based out of Mumbai, India. The company lies at the intersection of creativity, technology, and media creating innovative experiences for brands that help them realize their greatest ambitions in a post-digital, consumer-controlled world.  Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Rikki Agarwal, Co-founder, Chief Business, and Operating Officer of Blink Digital.

1. What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?

Ans. We began with the idea of combining creativity and technology. Both the founding partners are engineers, which means that as an agency we adopt emerging innovative technology immediately, and over the years we have seen this give us a first-mover advantage in the industry.

2. What's your growth plan for the next 12 months?

Ans. We've been rapidly growing and ended the financial year at 2.5X growth. We intend to maintain the same growth rate. In the previous two years, we mushroomed fourfold in terms of people. We want to expand in the fastest-growing sector right now, namely Web 3.0, NFTs, and the Metaverse.

3. How is your company helping customers deliver relevant business outcomes through the adoption of the company's technology innovations?

Ans. Since we have a lot of people with a technology background, we're doing live cash checks for our clients to assess how their business is doing in terms of ROI. We're using Google Data Studio and supermatrix to make sure they understand the outcomes. In terms of technology, we're also exploring NFTs to see if we can generate market buzz and increase top-of-mind recall for brands. It has yielded positive results for us as well as the clients.

4. What is your Leadership Mantra?

Ans. Our leadership mantra is empowering people by giving them the power to execute. Also, we want to be ahead of the curve so that we are considered innovators since we are one step ahead of what other agencies or people in India are doing.

5. What are some of the challenges faced by the industry today?

Ans. The challenges haven't changed. For example, the industry is still transitioning from television to digital; digital operates faster than traditional media. For each campaign, there are multiple stakeholders and agencies. But there is no one to take accountability. As a result, many clients believe that digital marketing is ineffective. Another issue is talent; because the industry does not pay much, there is always a scarcity of talent as many creative individuals do not join. These are some of the challenges we are facing.

6. The industry is seeing a rising importance of business and technology enablers like virtualization, convergence, and cloud. How do you see these emerging technologies impact your business sector?

Ans. Emerging technologies are already impacting business sectors. The majority of advertising tools use AI to reach out to the right audience. For example, in past years, marketing on TV or in print was solely contact-based; now, things are changing with the emergence of digital. Live dashboards, analytics, and other features are accessible. You can access a lot of real-time data and do experiments with the help of technology. Previously, before launching a TV commercial, we would conduct market research to see how our scripts were perceived. We can now do so using digital technologies. Now digital has started replacing market surveys. So, digital does influence marketing.

About AR/VR, for example, Facebook is entering the Metaverse and plans to execute their own NFT, while many other brands are doing NFT drops globally with great success. Talking about AR, Facebook and Instagram filters are becoming more mainstream. These are getting used in reels, etc. As a result, these technologies are getting adopted. When Metaverse takes off, where there is a digital replica of you and the world, VR will take off too. Facebook is also banking on the same thing.

7. What is the reason that organisations are using IoT/analytics/big data/AI/ML/Big Data Analytics?

Ans. Technology tools such as IoTs are used at an industry level to improve production. In terms of marketing, digital offers you a lot of data with AI involved. Organizations use data to analyze consumer insights. However, there are a lot of discussions and less execution involved.  For instance, all of these big startups or US-listed companies have substantial marketing expenditure,  and they have been able to leverage all of this. But I haven't seen them do anything from this standpoint. Perhaps, in the future, FMCG companies will modify their organizational structures and begin to adapt to new technologies.

8. How have you seen the evolution of the industry? As you said that you have been here from the beginning, how has the growth been?

Ans. Digital is becoming a leading platform for most brands today and will continue to be the same in the future. The growth rate is phenomenal, and as a result, a lot of money is flowing into digital, and talent and work quality are both improving.