BFSI, auto and commerce sectors on FCB/SIX’s radar in its first year in India

Chief business officer Ankit Banga reveals what the new agency intends to do in its first year in India and Asia.

First impressions matter, a lot. Elevator pitches to the first 100 days in a new job, every second matters for people. For a new company, however, the first year is a good bar to measure the quality of its impression.

FCB/SIX, as per its chief business officer Ankit Banga, intends to charm its observers with a 30-35% revenue in the first year of operations in India, as well as “build large key accounts.”

The creative performance agency landed in Asia less than 10 days ago, with India being its first stop. Banga, who’ll helm the agency’s India operations, tells afaqs! that he’s looking at three key sectors to drill in FCB/SIX’s expertise.

Its priority is the banking, finance, services and insurance (BFSI) sector, because it’s “always on and not seasonal in nature, when you’re looking to set up something.”

Following BFSI is the commerce industry that Banga feels is “underleveraged in the Indian digital ecosystem.” The agency will focus on D2C, retail and even FMCG, as it looks to bolster its presence in this sector. Third is the auto sector and this is by design, considering the FCB Group’s expertise in servicing auto clients, such as Tata Motors.

FCB/SIX is the second big agency induction from the FCB Group in India, which in April 2023, fully acquired digital agency Kinnect and rebranded it to FCB Kinnect. Its founders Rohan Mehta and Chandni Shah are the reason Banga chose to join FCB/SIX from Credilio, a fintech company, where he was head of brand and marketing.

A cursory glance at Banga’s LinkedIn profile will reveal that he hasn’t worked at an agency. He disagrees and says that during his stint at the Indiabulls Group, from 2011 to 2022, he “was running an agency inside the group.”

The company had several products, such as (smartphone) apps, websites and more. So, it formed a central marketing team, and Banga headed it. The team looked after creative, performance, branding, CRM and other allied duties.

During his time there, Banga struck up a relationship with Mehta and Shah, first as a client that later turned into a friendship. It was Mehta who messaged Banga about this opportunity and if he’d be interested to work in an agency.

“Honestly, I’d thought of working in an agency,” Banga reveals, adding it was a great opportunity because he’d get to work across categories. He’d be able to bring in a client’s thinking process to a business inside an agency.

FCB/SIX isn’t hiring a lot of people because FCB Kinnect has allocated 120 employees from its media and CX arms.

“We have data experts with us. What we’re doing is growing and building it through a lot of sessions with the global FCB/SIX teams that have deployed data-centric approaches for clients in New York, Chicago, Brazil and New Zealand.”

FCB/SIX is currently using GWI, ComScore and Forrester, and is leveraging the capabilities of FCB Group’s research agencies Kinesso and Acxiom. It’s also working with partners like Gartner and SimilarWeb, where it can get hold of a lot of industry reports. The agency is working with specialists and data engineers, who can work on SQL and “build data-centric approaches on client’s data.”

As it works on client briefs using these tools, generative AI has made its way into the FCB Group, including FCB/SIX. Content writing, building the response management unit to be more abreast with this technology, use cases in media, and autogenerating reports for what it’s doing for clients, are the areas where FCB/SIX is using generative AI.

All this work is bound to deliver in some form. Will it cast the impression that’s needed? There is still time for the year to end.