“We aim to be the biggest digital marketing transformation company in the world”

Logicserve Digital, India’s largest independent integrated digital marketing and transformation company, last month underwent a revamp and renamed itself as LS Digital. This transformation into a dynamic entity with a renewed vision, “to help brands enable and accelerate their digital marketing transformation to stay relevant to their ever changing, digitally-enabled consumers”, will be building upon its existing media capabilities and help better serve the Indian market while setting the stage to becoming a leader in the global digital marketing landscape.

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In keeping with its new vision to expand its global footprint, as a first step, LS Digital has onboarded digital first creative agency Langoor to strengthen its service offerings for CX, digital design, and Web 3.0. Langoor adds another layer to LS Digital’s service offerings, allowing it to leverage their expertise in providing better customer experience.

In an interaction with Adgully, Prasad Shejale, Founder & CEO, LS Digital, and Venugopal Ganganna, Co-founder and CEO, Langoor, speak about Logicserve Digital’s transition to LS Digital, the acquisition of Langoor, how the combined entity will enrich the brands’ digital capabilities, and more.

Could you take us through the thought process behind transitioning Logicserve to LS Digital? What is the core thought behind it?

Prasad Shejale: It all started many years back wherein, the whole thought process of how we can actually solve the customers’ problems. And that is where probably a lot of learning happened during the Covid time – considering the fact that there are multiple touchpoints that a customer is going through, of which digital is one of the most important one. In the earlier times, if you crafted a great story and bought great media, the consumers started their offline journey. But when it comes to digital, then along with crafting the story you also need to provide the right experience.

While interacting with some of the big clients, we realised that there are six important areas on which one has to really craft that, including media, UI/UX, creative, data insights, customer experience, and the tech and innovation. That was the thought process on which we started working on. When we looked at the consumer journey and what they want, we put together this digital marketing transformation framework, and then when we started having discussions. I have always believed that there are certain skills that are built inhouse and then there are certain passionate founders who have unlocked how to take care of that. So, that is how we started talking to Venu (Venugopal Ganganna, Co-founder and CEO, Langoor). He brings in a lot of experience from the customer experience perspective.

You have also unveiled your renewed vision. How is this renewed vision different from the earlier one that you had and along with this, what are the gaps in your service areas and strategy that you intend to cover with your renewed vision?

Prasad Shejale: I would not say gap because it is evolving. The new vision revolves around the six areas that I have mentioned about and making sure that our customers get all the services under one platform or one group, one bunch of great people and great companies under which they can get that one integrated solution, that is something that we are trying to do. So, if you see what the gap was, thought process was already there, we are moving from that point to the point where we really need to have integrated services – that’s something that we are working on. When I fast forward a few years, hopefully we will be the biggest digital marketing transformation company in the world, with all these services under one platform.

Langoor entered India way back in 2011, when you have started out with this R&D centre in Bengaluru. Since then, Langoor has traversed quite its own journey in India and has been able to set up its base and strengthen its field in the digital marketing space here. How do you look back at Langoor’s journey in India?

Venugopal Ganganna: We actually started out as a global company based out of Sydney and having an R&D centre in Bengaluru to tap into the technology expertise. At the end of the day, we were saying that we are extremely good in data and creative, so let’s mix that with technology and create impact for the brand. Thus, what started as an R&D brand giving services to global customers, with the rapid ascent of digital in 2013-2015, it just exploded within India for us. Between 2015 and 2019, we matured most of our digital services, but it was all about customer at the centre. When we started putting customer at the centre, data became more important, but most importantly, the marketing automation, space started becoming very important. So, in 2017-2020, we started building  , lot of good enterprise and consumer automation experiences to the stack.

It is a continuous journey. Every six months, you need to innovate, build new practices, new capabilities, and that is what we are extremely good at. That’s what the biggest value the platform will start offering brands.

You have just got out of a brief association Havas and now getting into this association with LS digital. What competencies did you build up when you were with Havas?

Venugopal Ganganna: In 2018-2019, we were saying that we are a global company, and had become very good in digital transformation and marketing automation. The aspect of going with a large global network was to spread that and make it horizontal across the globe. However, because of Covid and everything, the plans went up and down. So, we used that opportunity to say what is clear for us, where we will truly add the value and also as entrepreneurs learn where exactly we will start playing very well. That’s when LS Digital came into the picture, where we are saying let us create closer to the customer connects rather than being very far away from the customer. There are 3-4 layers of conversation that will happen as the group becomes bigger. But in this case we are very close to the group, we are having a seat at the table from a strategic aspect, and more importantly, from a personal aspect. There is very much an entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur connect, so decisions like making innovations and investments are expedited. I and Prasad are cut from the same cloth of technology guys-turned-marketers. So, there is a very larger connect creating a larger impact. That’s where the excitement started and that’s where we are now.

How did you zero in on Langoor? How exactly did you go about the merger talk and how did everything come together?

Prasad Shejale: I really resonate with what Venu said about being cut from the same cloth. Both of us are engineers, we started our careers in the software industry and we understand technology pretty well. Our minds are on the same page and if the minds are on the same page, then the discussions do start. We talk a similar language, but at the same time we get a lot of different perspectives. We at LS Digital are very strong in media, but when I speak to Venu, he gives a very different spin on the media part of it. How do you really put creative and technology to create an experience around that?

Thus, there is a huge amount of synergy when we started talking about it and the more we talked about it, the more we got excited about the whole thought process of why can’t people with different skills come together, see the problem in a different light and solve that complex problem for the customer. It’s like you go on a date, but at the end of the day you realise, I want to spend my life with this person!

LS Digital has figured out how to scale the business to a massive scale, because it’s a phenomenally run process-oriented organization. When you put the right processes in place, scaling becomes very easy.

Venugopal Ganganna: Langoor is also a company with a good amount of business coming from abroad. We know how to cater to the global player sitting here in India, which is something we want to do. The whole story of LS Digital is going to be a global story. So, their expertise in delivering projects sitting here in India is very critical for us. Thus, we have a lot to learn from them, and they, too, can learn from all of us. Those are the competencies that I’m talking about – building scale, delivering export projects while sitting here in India – that will be a good combination there.

(Addiitional inputs by Madhurima Kar)