'We Are The Swiss Army Knife Of Agencies'

The Glitch, a nine-year-old agency founded by Varun Duggirala and Rohit Raj has recently been in the news, courtesy its acquisition by GroupM. We talk to the two founders and the CEO, Pooja Jauhari, to understand how the new-age agency works, what makes them different and their plans for the future

- Samarpita Banerjee

Back in 2009, when the world was hit by the recession, college batchmates Varun Duggirala and Rohit Raj decided to quit their jobs at Channel V after it decided to pivot away from music. While the timing for taking such a step would seem inappropriate and risky to most, for the duo, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

“We were told by a lot of people that it was the worst time for us to make the shift,” says Duggirala. However, he adds that it turned out to be the best time because that was when clients were on the lookout for smarter solutions. “And that is exactly what we were equipped to provide them with. At that point of time, nobody was doing much in the Digital space. We started off working with a set of clients that we already knew, mainly from the TV network. Gradually, thanks to word-of-mouth, people saw the kind of work we were doing, and liked it,” he adds.

In the last nine years, The Glitch has come a long way. Having started off as a production house for the web, it evolved into an innovation company for the digital space, then to a digital agency and finally to its current form, a 360-degree integrated communications company. It was probably this constant adaption to change and the quality of work which they came up with, that finally led to its acquisition by GroupM recently. Duggirala stresses that the evolution has been an important step in transforming the organization into what it is today, and is perhaps what differentiates them from a lot of other agencies out there. “Today we don’t live in a world where you draw up a structure and clients come and work within that. You need to create your structure based on what clients want. We were able to do that for our clients, which worked in our favour,” says Duggirala.

THE JOURNEY SO FAR