Our Team

We run a free 30-minute discovery call to understand your stage, channel mix, team, and the specific outcome you are trying to move. Based on that we either send a fixed-price proposal (for clearly scoped work like a website migration or a content programme), a retainer proposal (for ongoing growth or platform work), or honestly tell you we are not the right fit and recommend someone who is.

Early-stage (under Rs 5 crore ARR): focus on a single channel + a single product narrative, pull learnings into a documented playbook before scaling. Mid-market (Rs 5-50 crore ARR): multi-channel orchestration + retention + AOV optimisation + lifecycle marketing rollout. Enterprise (Rs 50 crore+ ARR): multi-region orchestration, governance + audit posture, integration spine across the marketing + commerce + analytics + finance stack.

Day 1-2: discovery + access setup + stakeholder map. Day 3-4: audit kickoff. we read your accounts, your analytics, your customer-service inbox, your past creative. Day 5: working draft of the 90-day plan delivered + reviewed with you. Week 2: signed plan + scope-locked + first execution work begins. By end of week 4 there are visible deliverables in market.

Five practice areas: paid media (Google Ads, Meta Ads, Amazon Ads), ecommerce + marketplace operations (Shopify Plus, Amazon SPN, Flipkart), CMS + headless web development (Next.js, Contentful, Sitecore XM Cloud), AI + automation (Claude on AWS, Vercel AI SDK, custom RAG), and martech operations (HubSpot, CDP integration, lifecycle marketing). Senior strategist on every account, no junior-only delivery.

Front-end: Next.js + React, TypeScript, Tailwind. Back-end: .NET 9 + ABP, Node.js (when the stack calls for it), PostgreSQL. AI: Anthropic Claude via AWS Bedrock, Vercel AI SDK, custom RAG on pgvector. Infrastructure: AWS (primary), Azure + GCP (when customer-stack dictates), Vercel for front-end deploys. We bias toward the simplest stack that fits the requirement. not the trendiest.

India Standard Time (IST = UTC+5:30) is our primary working hours. For GCC + UK customers we have overlapping availability windows defined in the engagement contract. US customers get morning IST + late-evening IST coverage; full-overnight coverage is available on enterprise retainers when business-critical.

Slack-connect channel for daily comms (most customers), weekly written status update via email + dashboard, fortnightly video sync with the strategist + delivery lead, quarterly governance review with the CMO / CTO. The exact cadence is locked at kickoff per the engagement contract. We avoid ad-hoc DMs as the primary channel. written-and-visible-to-everyone-on-the-account scales better.

Honest answer: depends on what we are doing. Paid media: meaningful CPA + ROAS shifts within 30-45 days, once Smart Bidding has enough conversion volume. SEO: 4-6 month lag is normal; we report leading indicators (rankings, click-through, content velocity) inside that window. Website rebuild: 8-14 weeks for a mid-market site, 16-24 weeks for enterprise. Lifecycle marketing: 30 days to first revenue lift, 90-120 days for sustained programme returns.

Standard payment terms are Net-30 from invoice date for retainer engagements and milestone-based for fixed-price projects. We invoice monthly for retainers and on milestone completion for projects. GST invoicing is automated for Indian engagements; we handle PO + GRN for enterprise customers that require it.

India: DPDP (Digital Personal Data Protection Act) compliant on customer data we touch. EU / UK: GDPR aware on every engagement that involves EU residents. GCC: regional data-residency on AWS Mumbai or AWS Bahrain as needed. SOC 2 Type II underway for the .NET CRM platform. Access to customer systems is through least-privilege roles + audit logging + quarterly access review.

D2C consumer (beauty, fashion, home, wellness, F&B), SaaS (B2B + product-led-growth), professional services (legal + accounting + consulting), real estate + financial services (consumer-facing), and education (online learning + edtech). We deliberately stay out of industries with adversarial regulatory posture (gambling, adult, crypto, regulated pharma).

D2C brands at Rs 5 crore to Rs 200 crore ARR, SaaS companies past product-market fit, and B2B services firms in mid-market enterprise sales motion. By region: India primary, GCC (UAE + Saudi) growing, UK + US for select engagements. By stage: most of our clients are Series A-C startups or 5-10 year-old profitable businesses scaling regionally.

Yes. Once we are at proposal stage we share 2-3 reference contacts in the closest matching vertical + stage as your business. You can speak to them about how we delivered, what they liked, what they did not. We do not curate around your call. the references include both clients who renewed multiple times and at least one engagement that ended on schedule rather than extending.

Yes. Most of our work is India-primary but we run engagements across the GCC (UAE + Saudi + Bahrain), the UK, and selectively the US. Multi-region engagements are a significant share of the work. the India + GCC + UK expansion shape is one of the most common reasons customers come to us.

Project-priced engagements work when the scope is clear and finite (website rebuild, content programme launch, single audit). Retainer engagements work when the outcome is ongoing (growth marketing, platform operations, content-publishing cadence) and predictability matters more than fixed scope. We default to project pricing for first engagements so both sides can size the working relationship before committing to a retainer.

Yes. Most engagements start small. a single audit, a quarterly retainer to fix one channel, a one-off website + content migration. Half our customers were small teams when they first engaged us; many scaled with us over 2-5 years. The right entry shape depends on what is actually broken vs what is just under-built.

Every engagement names a delivery lead + a backup + an account director. P1 escalation (revenue-impacting or trust-eroding issue) gets a same-day response from the account director, a written RCA within 48 hours, and a follow-up review within 7 days. P2/P3 issues route through the regular working cadence. We document the escalation matrix in the engagement contract so there is no ambiguity about who to call.

You own everything we build for you. Code goes into your repo, content goes into your CMS, data goes into your warehouse. We hold a non-exclusive licence to use anonymised insights for case studies (with your written consent), and we retain the right to use generic patterns + frameworks across other engagements. The exact IP terms are in every engagement contract.

Standard NDAs at engagement start. Access to client systems via least-privilege roles + audit logging. Code we write goes into your repos, not ours. Data we touch stays in your warehouse / your cloud account; we do not exfiltrate. Generic architectural patterns + frameworks we use across engagements; specific client data + business logic stays with the client.

For project engagements: documented handover, training of your team on what we built, 30-day post-launch support included in the engagement, optional ongoing retainer if useful. For retainer engagements: notice period per the contract (typically 60-90 days), structured offboarding, documented knowledge transfer. We do not lock customers in; we expect to be retained because the work is useful, not because the exit is painful.

P1 (revenue-impacting): within 2 business hours during IST working hours, within 8 hours otherwise. P2 (operational): within same business day. P3 (planning / question): within 2 business days. Enterprise retainers can negotiate tighter SLAs including 24x7 P1 coverage; this is contracted explicitly when relevant.

Active partnerships with Google, Meta, Amazon Ads, Amazon SPN, Shopify Plus, Microsoft Advertising, HubSpot, Vercel, Contentful, Sitecore, and AWS. Certifications across the team include Google Ads Specialist, Meta Blueprint, Amazon Ads Verified, Shopify Plus Partner, HubSpot Diamond, AWS Solutions Architect Professional, and Microsoft AI Engineer.

Anything under Rs 50,000 per month total retainer or under Rs 3 lakh for a fixed-price project. Not because we cannot help at smaller scales; because the engagement overhead becomes most of the cost. For founders earlier than this, our blog + glossary + downloadable playbooks are the right starting point; reach out when you are at the next stage.

Depends on the client + the case. We always ask. Some clients prefer named case studies for the marketing value; others prefer anonymised for confidentiality reasons. Both work for showcasing the operational pattern; the value is in the architecture + the result, not the client identity. We never publish without explicit written consent from the client.

Both. We have engagements with Series A-C startups in growth mode + with 5-15 year-old profitable businesses scaling regionally. The criterion is not funding status; it is whether the business has product-market fit + a real growth question we can help answer. We have politely declined engagements with pre-PMF startups where marketing investment would not produce defensible learnings.

You can hire them. Our consultants + senior associates are not contractually prevented from joining customer teams. We do require notice + an honest conversation if it's happening, plus an industry-standard placement fee paid to Dcrayons for senior hires. We have placed multiple long-term hires this way; the relationship is more important than the fee.

We use AI extensively for research, draft generation, code, and operations. but every customer-facing piece passes through a human editor + a senior reviewer before shipping. We do not ship AI-generated content as-is. We are also transparent with customers about where AI is used in our delivery. The position is that AI is a use tool, not a quality substitute.

Both within scope of our role. We don't replace your legal team or DPO; we do the technical compliance work (consent capture, data minimisation, retention policy implementation, audit-log architecture, DSAR fulfilment workflows). For full legal + DPO functions, we partner with specialist law firms + recommend specific ones we trust.

Both. Common audit shapes: a 10-day Amazon programme audit (Rs 5-8 lakh), a 14-day paid media account audit (Rs 6-10 lakh), a 21-day technical SEO + analytics audit (Rs 8-12 lakh). Each ends with a written report + a 90-minute findings session + a 30-day implementation support window. Many engagements start as an audit and become retainers; many stay as audits.

Fixed fee, almost always. Percent-of-spend creates an incentive to grow spend rather than grow outcomes; we have seen too many agency relationships go wrong over that misalignment. The exception is performance marketing programmes where the customer specifically asks for a small performance kicker on top of a fixed base.

We do not take direct competitors in the same category in the same region. Customers in adjacent categories or different regions are fine. The list of categories we currently work in is shared during scoping conversation if relevant. If a competitor signs after you, we honor the original commitment + decline the new engagement.

Both shapes work. Most enterprise engagements are co-delivery: your in-house team owns execution + we own strategy + senior expertise. Smaller engagements may be us doing more of the hands-on work. We are explicit about the shape at engagement scoping. The most common failure mode is the unclear shape. we and your team duplicating work or missing handoffs. so the scoping conversation defines this carefully.

Both. The most common shape: 4-8 week strategy engagement, then transitions into either ongoing retainer or specific implementation projects. We have rarely delivered strategy + walked away; the value is in implementation lessons + iteration. Customers who genuinely want only strategy are welcome too; we make the choice explicit.