Who are we?
We are a brand & business growth practice and the word “practice” matters, because a practice is about continuity, about building on what you’ve done to prepare for what’s next.
That’s been our ethos for 39 years: to stand alongside businesses as they move from one stage to another, from one product to a portfolio, from one campaign to shaping the brand, helping them frame decisions that unlock growth.
Truth be told, some of our most notable partnerships go back 30 years, something we are deeply proud of.
What do we do?
At the simplest level, we help brands and businesses find clarity, about their consumers, about the problem worth solving, and about the path that will actually create momentum and growth.
Once clarity is in place, creativity, culture, design, and even business decisions flow more meaningfully. That’s why we often say: a problem framed, is a problem solved.
Most of our work is at the intersection of three things, consumer psychology, cultural shifts, and brand ambition, helping businesses and brands grow from that point of tension.
We typically work with partners in one of five situations:
- When entering a heavily commoditised or contested category
- When there is a sense of stagnation that sets into the business
- When an organisation or family seems misaligned towards the future
- When one aims to diversify and is looking for fresh perspectives for future growth
- When one seeks the voice of customer to stream line business thinking and growth
What is the size and strength of the company?
We’re a 14-member team, spread across insighting, strategy, and design. Something that is intentional and not accidental.
We believe in being hands on and working closely, hence our promise even today to partners is that the person who takes the brief will also be the one in the room making the final recommendations. No layers. No dilution. No outsourcing.
To us that matters because we’ve seen how often business thinking falls through the cracks when teams change, and the cycle of “rethinking” begins afresh each time.
What are the various services your practice caters to?
We work across four interconnected areas:
- Consumer Discovery – consumer need assessments and behavior mapping, category deep dives, uncovering cultural shifts
- Brand Monitoring – tracking brand perceptions, narratives, and imagery as they evolve
- Brand Strategy – brand positioning, architecture, propositions, messaging, and design
- Growth Mentoring – leadership alignment, culture mapping, audits, and ongoing advisory support
Each of these four overlap, build on each other, and together help brands not just define who they are, but also decide what they want to become.
In essence we work downstream, from consumer discovery to brand strategy to design and execution.
Some notable clients and campaigns you’ve worked on?
Our most impactful work has always been with challenger brands in crowded categories, those who have had to carve out relevance when everything around them looked the same.
For example we have been part of Vini (Livon, Moov, Fogg, Crack Cream) for over 30 years and counting.
We have also worked across categories and spaces including personal care, beauty, fashion, education, retail, BFSI, lifestyle, health etc.
Currently, some of the ongoing projects we are most excited about are:
- Positioning a speciality coffee brand in a fast growing and very crowded category
- Supporting a legacy player in the male innerwear segment launch its first ever female brand and product line
- Working with a partner in the pharma and healthcare space, build a nutraceutical brand at the intersection of beauty and gut health
- Helping a designer wear brand reposition itself and find alternate spaces to drive business growth
- Helping a rainwear brand align their product portfolio, brand architecture and marketing efforts for the next few years
- Working with a partner in the BFSI space, helping them decode how different cohorts choose and decide where to invest and why
What makes you stand out from the rest?
I think there have always been two things we have been focussed on
- Plain speak: No jargon, no marketing whataboutery. If an idea can’t be explained in Hindi or on a single slide, it’s too complicated for the consumer and for us.
- Consumers and culture first thinking: We don’t start with frameworks or models, we start with real people.
Apart from that, being an entrepreneur-run company, we have always enjoyed working with founder- and promoter-driven companies, where the personal stake is high and no decision needs a committee’s approval.
What separates us most, perhaps, is our past which is rooted in deep consumer and culture understanding and the choice to always operate as insiders. We see ourselves as partners in the trenches, sitting with our clients to frame problems, before we begin seeking solutions.
What has been the biggest hurdle?
The biggest hurdle has been the changing culture of marketing itself. All too often, it is reduced to performance ads, discounts, and quick fixes without any clarity on what the brand stands for.
We often say: if your Diwali post is just going to be a static with “Happy Diwali” written on it, maybe you don’t really have a brand strategy and need us the most.
Sometimes we half-joke that marketing should have a certification exam like medicine or law. If doctors and accountants are trained and certified, why not marketers?
However, coming back to the question at hand, I feel the biggest hurdle has been in trying to stay true to the fundamentals of marketing and brand building, often at the risk of coming across as preachy or old school.
What are some of the key future goals or projects you are working towards?
Apart from all the work on active projects, there are a few interesting initiatives and projects underway:
- A Marketer’s Dashboard: A tool that helps marketers actively plan, monitor and steer their brand and marketing initiatives through the year.
- A Challenger Brand Model: A way of decoding what it takes for brands to move from early wins to scaling beyond the 100-cr mark, without losing what made them distinct in the first place.
- A Specialist Brand Naming Division: Where this is not a new launch and has been active for over 2 decades, suddenly we have seen a lot of interest from partners so we are working on trying to enhance the offering
- Gen Z from the Gen Zs mouth: A small, but instrumental piece of work, because we have had enough outsiders write and share on how Genz think and behave already.
How has the company culture affected overall performance?
Our culture is intentionally flat, curious, and questioning. We believe good ideas can come from anyone, and that curiosity often takes us down rabbit holes that open new perspectives.
Two practices that we are sticklers for internally: a habit of reading and a habit of writing. Reading keeps us exposed to worldviews beyond our usual ecosystem. Writing forces us to clarify our thinking and express it simply. Together, they make us sharper as individuals and stronger as a team.
This culture has helped us stay nimble, open-minded, and unafraid to challenge our own assumptions, qualities many of our partners value and expect us to bring to the table.
What roles is the practice hiring for and how to reach out?
We don’t view hiring as a transactional process. Some of our best colleagues joined us not through job postings, but through conversations where we felt a mutual fit.
That said, as we move into building new tools and models, we will be opening up roles in insighting and strategy soon.
The best way to reach us is to follow us online on LinkedIn, or simply write to me at adnan.pocketwala@ormaxworld.com .
The best way to reach us is to follow us on LinkedIn or write directly to adnan.pocketwala@ormaxworld.com. If there’s curiosity and alignment, we’ll always find a way to work together.
