When Hyphen became consultant to the top consulting firm of India

Witness to India’s transformative journey from a mere $330 billion economy in 1994 to a major $2.2 trillion global economy in 2017, Universal Consulting has kickstarted the new year by revamping itself and has been renamed as UC Strategy. The 23-year old Indian strategy consulting firm based in Mumbai focuses on strategy creation and strategy execution in Life Sciences, MedTech, Agribusiness & Food, Industrials and Banking & Financial Services. Complementing the new name is also a completely fresh brand identity, which goes from logo and signage right down till the website and presentation templates. 

UC Strategy got on board Hyphen, a brand engagement product agency, to develop its logo and identity as it moved into its third decade. “The Hyphen team was reliable and responsive in its approach to developing the logo and evolved it to appropriately reflect the intrinsic characteristics of our firm, as well as balancing it with the competitive dynamics of the marketplace. They always presented their unique point of view and worked with us to converge it into a seamless brand concept. We enjoyed the process of working with the creative and professional Hyphen Team,” said Jay P Desai, Founder & Managing Director, Universal Consulting India Pvt Ltd. 

Going forward Universal consulting wanted to focus the new direction for the firm in it's core strength of strategic consulting. Desai shared, "We didn’t want to highlight the execution part of consulting which is primarily legwork, rather we wanted to take the high ground with strategic consulting, which is our core competency. We have developed a name with our clients as well as with new business, about having a deep understanding in the Indian consulting space, specializing in Indian consumer/market insights. Therefore, we decided that our new identity must also reflect this obvious change in the organizations outlook very emphatically in the new identity.”

Commenting on the rebranding exercise, Prasanna Sankhe, Founder & Creative Head, Hyphen, said, “When we were asked to become design consultants for India’s top consultancy firm, which is an advisor to the biggest brands in India, we had to dig deep and find a brand attribute that was so uniquely ours that we could use it to forge an identity that can only be our trademark. The brand pyramid consulting tool that is a uniquely used by Universal Consulting became the focal point in the new logo that we created. And the logo itself was a simple, no-nonsense, efficient logo which conveyed the serious quantum of work done by UC.” 

He added, “As the brand, itself was trying to redefine itself into the strategic part more than the operations part of consulting, we also suggested a snappy name change, which made the task easy as well as shortened the name: UC Strategy. Kudos to the client team for supporting this bold and confident step of changing the name itself. This made the impact of the identity even more effective.” 

When quizzed on any learnings from the past that were implemented during the process, Sankhe quipped, “From our collective experience in Brand Design and identity schemes we knew that the simpler the logo is, the more impactful it is. Given the stature and scope of work that the brand operates in, we decided that the logo needed to be a no-frills, very efficient identity which doesn’t succumb to the ‘fads’ or the ‘trends’ in design. In this case we took two important decisions and the client supported us in both the decisions whole-heartedly. First, and this was a big recommendation, was to change the name from Universal consulting to UCSTRATEGY to communicate in no uncertain terms our intent to drive our imagery towards strategic consulting. And secondly, while developing a classic logo that will stand the test of time, we decided to use the shape of the triangle pyramid strategy tool which, is embedded in our brand truth, has become synonymous with all our strategic planning work. These two decisions have really contributed in making a sharp, focussed and impactful identity that stands toe-to-toe with the BIG 4 of consulting strategic firms worldwide.”

Touted as India’s largest indigenous consulting firm, UC Strategy houses a team of around 60 people and has worked with 350 multinational and Indian companies, accomplishing 940 cases for them.