Value 360 Communication today said that they added 45 new clients in the last four and a half months with an annual contract value of  1.6 million US dollars 

 Kunal Kishore, founder director Value 360 Communications said, "When India announced a nationwide lockdown, in March, we saw a knee jerk reaction from some of our clients, specially clients which were severely impacted due to Covid. Many clients negotiated with us for reduction of fee and some suspended their ongoing retainer. New clients postponed their mandate indefinitely. All this immediately impacted our top-line."

Kishore shares some of the steps taken to restore growth:

 On repurposing growth strategy 

As an organisation it was very critical for us to re-evaluate our strategies. What followed was a very thought out approach which helped us to clock month on month growth even during this crisis time, and with the current run rate of recurring income we are confident of registering a double digit growth this financial year. 

Kishore shares some interim decisions taken to prepare for the long run:

1. A record of 45 New Clients with total annual contract of 1.6 million USD onboarded over 4.5 month: We changed our approach and our process quickly after 26th March, 2020. We reduced our turnaround time for any new business pitch to less than 48 hrs. We structured new models of engagement and made our onboarding process hassle free. We created more than 100 case studies for different categories of clients, which we used effectively to showcase our capability and execution prowess to all our new prospects. The outcome is reflective of all this. We also focussed on targeting businesses which had grown during covid lockdown.

• Robotic Company
• Air Sanitizing Company
• Crowd Management Start ups for Malls
• Online Gaming Companies
• Edtech Companies
• Financial Services
• Covid Solution Providers
• Digital First Business's

2. Revival of 20 lost Clients: We followed an approach of hyper connectivity with all our clients even the ones who had taken a break. We asked our client servicing team to be in constant touch with their lost clients throughout and keep them informed on how their industry peers are building their communication during this time. This process helped us to bring back 20 old clients who had taken an interim break.
3. New Venture - ClanConnect.ai: While we were focussing on consolidating our position as Value 360, we were also making investor pitches for our new venture. During this pandemic when investment cycle has been impacted severely, we were able to raise a substantial seed investment for our new venture (Soon to be announced). Marquee investor from Indian startup world have participated in this round. 

Our new  venture ClanConnect.ai is an AI enabled influencers and brands market place which is built with a vision of making influencer marketing simpler and scalable for brands.  

4. New model of working: We identified consultants for project and outsourced some work, while keeping our recurring expense lower. 

5. Reducing our fixed expenses: We renegotiated with our all vendors, landlords and partners to reduce our monthly fixed expenses. 

6. 26 New Hiring and restoring of salary - By end of August we would have completed 26 new hirings from the month of April, out of which 10 new members have already joined our team and 16 members will join over next two months. While in the beginning of the pandemic, we did implement a very interim salary correction, but with a promise that we would get back to our original salaries at the earliest. We were able to start this process in a staggered manner where we revised the salary back to precovid days for 55% of our people within the first month, and slowly we have reversed it now to 100 percent of our team members with our current salaries. 

We are happy that as a firm we have been able to bend the curve and sustain our momentum in the time when GDP is at all time low. We as an agency were born during the 2007-08 world recession, which helped us to learn resilience and implement the right strategy to fight any economic adversity. 

Kunal Kishore is founder director, Value 360 Communications