MUMBAI: For Ravinder Banka, it has been a momentous eight-year journey since he started Eggfirst from a garage in Kalina, a western suburb in Mumbai, in October 2004.

The creative, media planning and design agency has created campaigns for clients such as Tata Tea, Oberoi Mall, Blaupunkt and Vim in these eight years. And it has two offices in Mumbai from where it churns out its creative work to service an expanding list of clients.

Armed with an engineering degree from VJTI and an MBA degree from Bajaj Institute, Banka started his professional career as a marketing analyst at Fergusson before it was taken over by Deloitte. This is where he was exposed to marketing insights in the Indian business space.

During his stint at Fergusson, Banka nurtured skills that gave him the confidence to hatch Eggfirst. He worked on three concepts – strategy, creative independence and commitment.

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“As a marketing consultant, I knew the importance of research and insight. For me, advertising was the next thing I could offer the clients. You see, providing insights is just the beginning. To break it down and then act on those insights is what the client needs and that is advertising to me,” says Banka.

Eggfirst firmly believes that the starting point of anything is strategy or a message that needs to be told through communication campaigns. “In today‘s environment, the ‘what‘ of the message is as important, if not more, as the ‘how‘ of the message and that is the reason why we at Eggfirst give strategy great importance,” reveals Banka.

Creative independence is another driving force behind Eggfirst. The agency believes in leaving free the creative department and prefers not to interfere in its working most of the time.

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Banka is of the belief that creative competency is the core strength of his agency – and that is one trait he would never want to compromise on! The team, head by Maanish Choudhari has a pretty free hand and creative independence has been woven into the fabric of the agency since inception.

The third part of Eggfirst‘s ideology is commitment. The agency believes in sticking to its promise at whatever cost. “At the end of the day, what matters is that the client should be satisfied. Our commitment is to our client‘s satisfaction. Even if things do go wrong, which they will from time to time, we make sure that in the end our clients get the value they came to us for,” explains Banka.

Eggfirst has handled varied assignments relating to the industry from packaging for HUL to creating television commercials for Hari Darshan incense sticks and rebranding drive for Oberoi Malls.

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For Eggfirst, the main revenue come from retainer accounts. “Currently 60 per cent of our clients are on retainer basis. The balance 40 per cent are on project basis. We have done a lot of project-based work for Hindustan Unilever and feel happy about it,” says Banka.

Banka is planning for Eggfirst‘s growth. “We are looking at expanding to regional and national clients.” But Banka is quick to explain that he is in no hurry to expand beyond Mumbai or offload stage to an investor. “I feel that we need to keep building on our premium. We still need to explore many aspects of the work and build on our creativity. As of now, we are happy doing more and better work in this space and let our work speak for us,” he avers.

So what does Banka believe in? “Cut out the cliche,” he says. “If you can do that, you will grow.”

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