Chromatus Consulting

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My company is Ingress Consulting, and we use the brand name FDi360. We’re a government and business consulting firm based out of India. I’m working with several economic development organizations across the world, helping them in their economic activities, in terms of investment and promotion.

I help Indian companies to globalize, and I help foreign governments get particular investments in different industry segments. I also do startup consulting, helping companies in terms of funding, go-to-market strategies, building customer bases, and so on. Similarly, I do business consulting for corporates. Most of my work has been government consulting.

What challenge were you trying to address with Chromatus Consulting?

We were engaged with a Canadian government client to identify Indian companies that wanted to globalize. I wanted to give them a perspective of the Indian subcontinent in terms of its IT sector, and I hired Chromatus to do a primary market report.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Chromatus' report was basically an overview of the Indian IT sector. I mandated that all the research conducted had to be primary. It was a month long engagement with set deliverables.

We finalized the core outcomes we wanted out of this, and Chromatus designed a table of contents for the report. We discussed what data, time periods, and sectors and subsectors should be considered, along with the chronology of the presentation.

What is the team composition?

I interacted with the project manager and one other team member. There was a third person assigned, who handled basic things like formatting and spellchecking.

How did you come to work with Chromatus Consulting?

After conducting some research, I found them through someone who was working in a market research company. Chromatus was described as a boutique market research firm that did a good job. I got a strong reference, and I couldn’t afford to pay a lot of money to a bigger company, so I engaged Chromatus.

What is the status of this engagement?

I worked with Chromatus from January–February 2020.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Chromatus delivered the project on time. I wanted to present this report to my client as a means for them to understand the Indian market and learn of relevant companies in the sector. This led to the client engaging with us again, and they want to continue with us. It was like icing on the cake.

The client particularly liked the report, and they told me they read it in detail while they were in flight and got some insights from it. We didn’t get any ratings as such, given that this report was complimentary, and I didn’t ask too much.

How did Chromatus Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

They got back to me as and when they had any doubts, and we had a weekly call to make sure everything was on pace. It was just a one-month engagement, so we had only four calls.

They were on time, and they communicated any doubts they had. Everything was coordinated in a good way, and there were no loose ends. It’s easy to operate in a small team, and this is probably why there were no loose ends.

We live in the same city, so we had face-to-face discussions once a week. The rest of the communication was via email, and we didn’t use any project management tools.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I haven’t worked with many other market research companies, so I couldn’t say what differentiates Chromatus from others. I think that their primary research is good.

They have a few connects in the industry, and they actually get people onboard. I’m actually looking to do another project with them, specifically around the Indian shrimp market, and they’re getting someone from the aquaculture industry for this. They can get specialists as and when needed for niche reports.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could onboard a graphic designer that could make better infographics. However, if the data is good, no one looks at the infographics.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I’ve only worked with them once, and I had a good experience, so I don’t know what advice to give. I could’ve identified some gaps on a longer, 6–8–month engagement, but this was a clean-cut project. It took one month, we communicated each week, and it was delivered on time.