Born Group: Big Experiences At The Crossroads Of Art & Science
Agencies in India focus predominantly on traditional channels: print, broadcast, radio, stores, events. Of the 15 channels including mail, packaging, gaming, displays, radio, broadcast, stores, websites, campaigns, newsprint, IoT, voice, social media, word-of-mouth, and adverts, we can consider eight of these the ‘older’ channels. BORN Group was created not just to address those eight channels, but also to breathe life into brands using the “newer” channels. This is where the agency’s name comes from.“The name ‘BORN’ is all about giving birth to brands in modern channels-IoT, gaming, mobile, social, web, to name a few”, says CEO Dilip Keshu. “We are one of the agencies that are trying to crack the code of not just surviving but thriving in a largely digital economy.” This award winning agency is one of the biggest global players in this space. BORN recently got acquired by IT services giant Tech Mahindra.
In its nine-year journey, BORN has occupied this unique position-being at the intersection of art (creative design) and science (tech skills). MD (APAC) Prakash Gurumoorthy confirms: “We’re in the business of creating something (connected experiences) that hasn’t been created before. This is all about creating the digital asset, telling the brand story and selling their products or services”.
Evolving Ahead of the Curve
Brands that focus primarily on traditional channels of communications like ads have been going through a sort of forced evolution globally, as consumers prefer mediums like web and social to print media. This decline has enforced a revolution in the communication models and approach.
“We aren’t facing that paradigm”, explains Gurumoorthy. “We are helping brands transact on showrooms that are entirely digital: websites. For instance, one of the four marketplaces we have built grew from a standing start to become India’s third biggest digital marketplace.”
BORN was one of the first agencies to realize that India wasn’t just a source of creative talent to serve global markets, but a giant potential domestic market in itself. Early success in helping Indian brands develop entirely new digital marketplaces has been a big contributor to this agency’s ten-year growth.
BORN’s Stella: Perfecting an Approach
BORN believes that, in the world of eCommerce, competency doesn’t have to mean a compromise on beauty. Keshu explains: “our eCommerce sites don’t sacrifice beauty to achieve smooth functionality. Yet, funcion needs to accompany form: if the infrastructure is impaired, the experience is impaired as well.”
The agency describes four principles that shape their approach. Each of these is influenced by four factors that drive consumer behavior online.
Attraction - enticing an audience through Creative Design and navigation
Interaction - through creating personalized content
Transaction - enabling a marketplace through eCommerce expertise
Reaction - ensuring that brands delight customers, through analytics and feedback
Prakash Gurumoorthy explains these four principles: “We combine these aspects of customer interaction with a brand into one integrated experience. We call this the ‘Brand Experience’ wheel. Our goal is to progressively improve customer experience with each turn of the wheel.”
Evolving this “Experience Wheel” helped BORN to combine Experience Management and Enterprise Commerce. Having done over 500+ Digital transformations with over 40 end markets, BORN came up with an industry-leading CX framework named Stella. Stella is all about combining Brand Experience, Behavior Experience and Book of Record Experience.
Stella today aligns with connected experiences for TechMahindra - We believe that brands look at connected experiences in a connected world and our capability spans across:
CX (Customer Experience),
Sx (Service Experience),
Px (Physical Experience),
Ox (Operational Experience)
Dx (Data Experience).
Customer Experience (Cx) defines a consumer’s experience of the brand, while Service Experience (Sx) helps the brand live up to the promise of Cx. Physical Experience (Px) recognizes the importance of brick-and-mortar stores, reimagining them as experience centers - much more than mere transaction points. Since strategy means very little if not coupled with solid execution, all of this is governed by Operational Experience (Ox). Underpinning these drivers is the foundation of data, labeled Data Experience(Dx).
Past Successes, and the Path Forward
BORN has conceptualized and developed service frameworks/ accelerators on established Digital and Commerce platforms in-house. A few examples include Arctic Fox (SalesForce Commerce Cloud Accelerator), BullDog(Adobe/ Magento Accelerator), Bison (Headless Commerce Accelerator) and EAGLE(SAP Commerce Cloud Accelerator), which all work on top of leading B2B, B2C, B2B2C platform providers. Each of these are designed to help clients achieve a faster go-tomarket on the pivots of time and costs.
The agency has worked with the best names in the industry, with clients in over 40 end markets: F&B, hospitality, services, distribution, discrete manufacturing, CPG, retail, education, auto, defense, insurance, financial services, and more. BORN’s client roster includes iconic and award-winning brands covering coffee, shoes, drinks, outerwear, luxury, fashion, semiconductors, gaming, machine tools, travel, hospitality, pet food, marketplaces, filters, auction houses, airports, and diamonds.
BORN Group is present today in all the marquee awards in APAC catering to Digital Agency excellence. BORN Group brought home 54+ awards in 2019 and emerged as a globally acknowledged end-to-end digital agency. Few of our marquee wins include the Agency of the Year 2019 at Asia E-commerce awards, SAP APJ Partner Excellence Award 2020, and Specialist Digital Agency of the year award at Indian Agency Awards 2020.
Prakash Gurumoorthy, Managing Director(APJ)
BORN is excited to be featured as CIO’s ‘Company of the Year’ a second consecutive time. This validates our thinking on storytelling, omni-channel and sales for our brands, partners, consumers and our internal team. We are continually driven to help brands implement spectacular brand, behavior and book-of-record experience!
Evolving this “Experience Wheel” helped BORN to combine Experience Management and Enterprise Commerce. Having done over 500+ Digital transformations with over 40 end markets, BORN came up with an industry-leading CX framework named Stella. Stella is all about combining Brand Experience, Behavior Experience and Book of Record Experience.
Stella today aligns with connected experiences for TechMahindra - We believe that brands look at connected experiences in a connected world and our capability spans across:
CX (Customer Experience),
Sx (Service Experience),
Px (Physical Experience),
Ox (Operational Experience)
Dx (Data Experience).
Customer Experience (Cx) defines a consumer’s experience of the brand, while Service Experience (Sx) helps the brand live up to the promise of Cx. Physical Experience (Px) recognizes the importance of brick-and-mortar stores, reimagining them as experience centers - much more than mere transaction points. Since strategy means very little if not coupled with solid execution, all of this is governed by Operational Experience (Ox). Underpinning these drivers is the foundation of data, labeled Data Experience(Dx).
Past Successes, and the Path Forward
BORN has conceptualized and developed service frameworks/ accelerators on established Digital and Commerce platforms in-house. A few examples include Arctic Fox (SalesForce Commerce Cloud Accelerator), BullDog(Adobe/ Magento Accelerator), Bison (Headless Commerce Accelerator) and EAGLE(SAP Commerce Cloud Accelerator), which all work on top of leading B2B, B2C, B2B2C platform providers. Each of these are designed to help clients achieve a faster go-tomarket on the pivots of time and costs.
The agency has worked with the best names in the industry, with clients in over 40 end markets: F&B, hospitality, services, distribution, discrete manufacturing, CPG, retail, education, auto, defense, insurance, financial services, and more. BORN’s client roster includes iconic and award-winning brands covering coffee, shoes, drinks, outerwear, luxury, fashion, semiconductors, gaming, machine tools, travel, hospitality, pet food, marketplaces, filters, auction houses, airports, and diamonds.
BORN Group is present today in all the marquee awards in APAC catering to Digital Agency excellence. BORN Group brought home 54+ awards in 2019 and emerged as a globally acknowledged end-to-end digital agency. Few of our marquee wins include the Agency of the Year 2019 at Asia E-commerce awards, SAP APJ Partner Excellence Award 2020, and Specialist Digital Agency of the year award at Indian Agency Awards 2020.
Prakash Gurumoorthy, Managing Director(APJ)
BORN is excited to be featured as CIO’s ‘Company of the Year’ a second consecutive time. This validates our thinking on storytelling, omni-channel and sales for our brands, partners, consumers and our internal team. We are continually driven to help brands implement spectacular brand, behavior and book-of-record experience!
