Bang Bang! It’s not an Ariana Grande song, it is about a company that isn’t, particularly a digital, marketing or media, it's a solution client partner which delivers it all. Schbang pronounced as Sh-Bang, was founded by three friends Akshay Gurnani, Harshil Karia and Sohil Karia back in 2015. After seven creatively filled years, Schbang employs over 900 people in three cities being one of the largest independent agencies with expertise in Integrated Communications and Marketing.

Every businessman has a story about how did he end up where he is today, here at Profectus we envision walking you through their life journey which tells the whole picture behind their business. Born and brought up in the city of dreams Mumbai, Akshay Gurnani- co-founder of Schbang, graduated from the star-studded H.R. College, Mumbai with a degree in Business Management Studies. Being the only student of his batch who took up both Finance and Marketing, Akshay always had aninclination towards business. After completing his degree, he worked as a Financial Analyst for about six months only to find out that it wasn’t his cup of tea.

Since the Jio era, digital marketing has flourished in India, everyone knows everything. But it wasn’t like that back in 2009. Moving from Finance to Marketing, Akshay joined a startup named ‘FoxyMoron’. Working with them for a few years, the company trusted Akshay to set up their branch in Gurgaon, where in just one and half years the team grew to over 40 people, with 10 full-time clients. The passion of being an entrepreneur isn’t fulfilled even when you are at the peak of your job, it just wants an adventure. So in 2014, Akshay returned to Mumbai to start Schbang with his partners Harshil and Sohil, whom he met at FoxyMoron.

Every team needs a dreamer, a realist and a creator.

Schbang is an independent agency that brings the completeness of offering. It is an idea that brought various integrated marketing needs under one roof. With a holistic experience, Schbang fulfills all marketing needs from content creation, writing strategy, video production, influencer marketing, geo technology, brands research and much more. Schbang name itself means completeness, which provides a complete holistic solution to the clients. Currently working with over 150 brands, to name a few Schbang has created campaigns for big brands like P&G, Godrej, Pidilite, Cipla, Castrol, Dominos, Swiggy and many more.

The big bang theory of Schbang wasn’t created overnight, starting over a company that provides completeness wasn’t easy says Akshay. Some of the early challenge includes acquiring clients, as everyone wants to see your previous work. Great   pitches and a vision for a future were something to start with. The toughest challenge was to get the first few clients, followed by which second was building a culture that would make their employees feel safe.

Being in a creative media field, which changes every day, is tough. One needs stay updated to set the precedence for the rest of the team. Akshay says, “Back when I started, Facebook was the only social media platform. 98 out of 100 people who had like a brand page would see our content – engagement was quite high. Today, with so many platforms and frequent changes in algorithms, it is hard to keep up the engagement. But we are always on top of these updates through industry news and by leveraging our platform relationships”.

Akshay was awarded as one of the TOP VOICES on LinkedIn. Among the rest of the social media apps, he states LinkedIn as his favorite since it’s a professional platform, where one gets to meet like-minded people easily.

“We don’t chase awards, we try to keep our clients and employees happy through our work. Awards are like a feather in the hat or a pat on the back, but executing a campaign just for the award is not the right approach.”

- Akshay Gurnani

The pandemic tore us down and every industry trying to get back on its feet since. But one industry that benefited from it were the diversified digital marketing and social media agencies. Schbang has infact doubled its team size within the past two years as many brands adopted digital marketing. The only challenge they had to face was how to efficiently work from home and maintain the culture that is so dear to the company. Akshay tells us that they had to transport laptops and accessories overnight to all the employees in different cities so that work doesn’t get disrupted. Other than that, the pandemic was good for them. It personally feels good for us to write that a company had a good time during the lockdown.

Schbang is looking forward to opening its first international branch in London by the end of 2022. The target is to first understand the way the European markets work and then set up base there. They also look forward to start their operations in countries like Canada and Middle East subsequently. The future for Schbang rests not just in their creative abilities, but also in their technological and data-driven prowess.

It was just a decade back when digital marketing wasn’t the main employment industry and today, it is filled with millennials and GenZ. MetaVerse is on our doorstep, a technology-driven company like Schbang is more likely to be the TATA of marketing.