Studio Watr

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the director and founder of BR Finance, a Financial consulting company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire WATR, and what were your goals?

We have worked with Watr to create our brand naming, brand essence, brand identity, and brand collaterals for our company.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We discovered Watr through Google search and Clutch as they have been rated as one of the top agencies for branding and experience design. They have designed the design ecosystem for Strata which is in the proptech and fintech space, we loved their approach and concept behind their designs. In addition, we found the founders to be highly passionate and enthusiastic about their work and had a clear vision to drive this forward.


Describe the scope of their work in detail, including any steps and the final deliverables.

The Watr team conducted a thorough workshop with us to understand the requirements, vision, mission, values to consolidate and interpret our ideas. They undertook their research, further refined our contested ideas, and presented us with ideas for our brand name. Once the brand was finalized for us, their team worked on our brand idea and identity concepts. On finalizing our identity, they worked on supporting collaterals such as typography, color palettes, stationery items, etc. The overall process of working with them has been simple, transparent, structured, and smooth.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

The team involved the founders leading the design with other team members driving the project management, content, and motion graphics.


RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Our team, partners, and clients have appreciated the outcomes. The identity has given us an expression in our domain of financial consulting. We will continue to collaborate with them in the future for more services.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

The collaboration process has been smooth for us, with Watr helping us better understand and manage our brand and outlook.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Watr is a growing company with a lot of energy. We loved their work and their ownership of our project. Their approach to our project has been dynamic and refreshing.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

We have encountered them constantly engaged in making the process delightful and smoother for their clients as their customer centricity has been outstanding.  We have recommended them to enhance their presence in the market. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the director of an EV three-wheeler manufacturing company that aims to bring a sustainable mobility system in the country starting with Delhi NCR.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire WATR, and what were your goals?

We wanted to create a master brand identity for Electric Mobility, consisting of EVs, charging, parking, financing, and servicing. We hired Watr to help us with the brand story ideation, brand identity creation, and master brand collaterals like company presentation, brochures etc.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Through web surfing and researching about brand identity creators.

Describe the scope of their work in detail, including any steps and the final deliverables.

To start, they conducted a comprehensive questionnaire and an interview round to get an understanding of the company and our values. Post the finalization of our story, they created a brand package with the new logo, tagline, and an entire brand manual with multiple brand collaterals.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Worked directly with the co-founder and they were the SPOC. One other brand specialist was on board.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The logo and tagline creation has been successful and received appreciation and acknowledgments. We are now clear with our brand story and have a streamlined communication strategy.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Communication tools were email and WhatsApp - which are the most convenient to use for any business. The timelines were reasonable and delivered tasks on time.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their transparency and timelines. Everything was on track and ran smoothly. The right kind of brand tools and procedures were used to successfully create a sustainable identity. They didn't shy away from disagreeing and presented their POV confidently to achieve the right outcome.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

None.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am one of the Directors of the TASA Group. I lead New Business Development and Growth in the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire WATR, and what were your goals?

We collaborated with WATR to accomplish the following:

• Conceptualize our new brand strategy and positioning
• Conceptualize and design the vision, architecture, flows for the overall web experience of the company through design thinking to embrace digital transformation
• Design Supporting Collaterals for our company

Being an experienced and established organization in core engineering - our goal was to refresh our brand and positioning strategy and simultaneously adopt digital transformation for our business to connect with our current and future customers.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We went through 11 vendors and we found the founders of Watr are warm and friendly and were straightforward about the process and outcome expectations. After an initial discussion, we aligned with the founders as they focused on our company's long-term vision rather than the short-term gains. We loved them because the founders led the project themselves and were particular about their ideas and quality, which we couldn't find in the other agencies despite their status.

Describe the scope of their work in detail, including any steps and the final deliverables.

As a company, we wanted to reapproach our brand strategy and positioning and adopt a digital strategy to address new clients. Watr spent a reasonable amount of time initially interviewing all the organization's stakeholders to understand the company's long-term vision than addressing solutions. The sessions/ workshops were centred around the 'why' of things and 'how' we plan to see our future.

Watr presented us with a detailed strategy for the brand and how we should proceed with our future positioning. The detailing justified the thought process behind the structure as they elaborated on every touchpoint for the brand and how our clients should interpret and interact with it. This process and the outcome, I believe, have brought about a significant shift in our thinking about our brand.

As the next step after establishing the new brand idea, Watr utilized the outcomes to create the digital strategy for our web presence, including experience vision, wireframes, content strategy, and final visual framework. The complete project process has been a combination of tangible and intangible outcomes where we have been delighted by Watr's sharp thinking behind establishing and deploying those solutions.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

The team comprised of the founders Arunabh (Brand and Experience Design) and Rimpy (Brand and Experience Design) leading the project along with Kaustubh (Experience Design) and Aman (Project Management)

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

I believe the project outcomes have been both tangible and intangible progress for our company. The tangible outcomes will include the brand and digital strategy and web presence, experience, and collaterals, which have helped us garner more clients due to our focused outlook. The intangible outcomes include a thorough understanding of our brand, its intended perception, and behaviour along all its touchpoints and interactions. This understanding has helped us explain our brand well to our customers and partners and set the expectations for everyone working with us.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

The sprints and workshops have been an exciting journey with discussing new ideas and asking difficult questions. The alignment with Watr has been a smooth process, with the founders being available for all our doubts and concerns and taking charge of the project. There was clarity on the deliverables/ outcomes right from the beginning, making our planning process easier for our next steps.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Watr is led by two young founders and their team, who are incredibly passionate about their work. We loved the clarity in their thoughts and process in crafting the project and its fundamentals on a solid conceptual/ philosophical framework backed by research and human behavior. The outcome and its derivates have been a fresh outlook on how we should look at things and seek to influence them.

Secondly, we loved the strong ownership in all their projects and details; Arunabh and Rimpy have led from the front, which has helped us not lose focus throughout and craft the vision we have imagined together. This was something fundamental to us - as after researching and speaking with multiple studios and agencies, we realized that the ownership of projects isn't necessarily taken up by the senior staff or founders after signing off. We wanted a 'no-factory, and no-templatized' approach to our outcomes and Watr has been the ideal fit being a premium boutique design firm.

And lastly, I would like to mention that they are competitive about proactively matching high-quality global standards in design. This 'go-getter never settles' attitude is what excited us the most about working with them.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Watr has actually delivered on their promises and there's nothing more I expect out of a vendor

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder of Airblack. I lead Product, Design, Community and Growth in the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire WATR?

We hired WATR to work with us closely on the following

• Conceptualise and shape brand identity
•  Brainstorm and design product flows and screens for Airblack Influencer Product on Web and App
• Brainstorm and design product flows and screens for Airblack Member App
• Design the brand launch website

What were your goals for this project?

With respect to the product: We had a working business flow on WhatsApp and Instagram. We are a marketplace with Influencers (Travel Designers) on one side working remotely, and travelers on the other side.

The third stakeholder is the business team. Key objectives were

• Enable Influencers to chat, recommend travel content and products as well as plan the entire itinerary for the member
• Enable Members to consume, decide and book various items on the itinerary
• Enable business team to track plab progress and manage various stakeholders’ experience

For the brand

•  We had stated objectives and had to come up with a brand identity and website

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were looking to hire a full-time team early on when we started. Had interviewed more than 50 design leaders across India and eventually started looking at agencies and consultants too. Spoke to top 10 agencies in Delhi NCR. We were introduced to WATR by WeWork Community and made them do a design exercise with us lasting a couple of days. We also heavily evaluate people on first principle thinking and in our case, ability to have ‘taste’ for premium brand design. WATR stood out on all fronts.

Describe the project in detail.

On selection, the first thing we worked together on was making the brand guidelines / identity, and designing the logo. My founder and I had detailed sessions with the team where they interviewed us on what we had in mind and asked us a lot of questions around brand and desired user perception. We had to iterate on the idea a couple of times.

The final output was very well thought out with deep philosophies around the ‘why’ of things, which is something our product team obsesses a lot on. Post this, we had to start working on the Influencer and Member product. We aligned on a weekly sprint, where WATR and us would meet at the starting of the week to align on weekly priorities and brainstorming sessions. We would look at the deliverables on Friday / Next Monday and move on to next.

Being an early stage startup developing maiden product, a lot of uncertainty existed in the scope midway and we would brainstorm a lot on product and design to tackle this. There have been instances where we would have 2 day long brainstorming sessions too. This lasted for 3-4 months with where we shipped products for development every 2nd or 3rd week.

On completion of the product for Members and Influencers, we moved on to making the website design. We approached the problem in similar ways but we were chasing insane launch deadlines - the project had 4 screens and had to be shipped in a week. Website brand designs can be tougher, but we were able to iterate on this twice in a matter of a week. We are working with the team now to wrap up certain smaller tasks and maintainance design.

What was the team composition?

The team comprised me (Product and UX research), Arunabh (WATR, UX Research and Product Design), Rimpy (WATR, Visual Designer and Product Design) and in a few meetings Aman (Technology Lead)

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Below are the outcomes of various things we worked on

• Website and Brand Identity - launched 1 month and 6 months ago respectively: appreciated in India’s startup community. One thing that we checked internally was how much do our members convert pre- ane post- brand launch? Since we are a new brand, 65% of members would ask on an average 3-5 questions about the brand on call before making their first high-ticket size travel transaction (only 40% completed this step) Post the website and brand launch, only 15% ask on an average 1-2 questions and 55% complete transactions. Close to 90% of our members read the website to be aware of the brand.
• Influencer Product - launched 2 months ago: 100% of our business and influencer team has moved to the product. Initial user feedback is positive. The average time to make a plan has come down to <1 hour, which initially was about 3-4 hours on WhatsApp and Instagram research. Moreover, Influencers can now create travel blogs while planning trips and it is a very exciting proposition for them. We are publishing 5-6 new blogs everyday with the product, which used to be 0 before the launch.
•  Member product - launched a month ago and WIP - too early to say but 40% of our current members plan on the Member App. The planning experience is seemless with almost 90% of them using our Wishlist feature to do selection. Members are spending > 60 minutes on the app every week. However, there are bugs and technical glitches we are solving so it would be too early to comment on metrics here.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We initially started with a more unstructured model in the first month but right after, we aligned on a weekly sprint. We would have reviews on Fridays / Mondays, discuss monthly priorities at the start of the month and then keep on aligning on weekly priorities. The workflow was efficient and worked with our development and business teams.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

From my experience of being a VC before and evaluating some of the best product businesses in India, I have seen that the most important thing in product design is the ability to think through problems from first principles and think through various possibilities / pros / cons before jumping to any solution. I have met many product designers but WATR’s ability to keep a high bar here stands out.

The second-most strength is passion for the work they have and ownership - it never felt that they were not a part of our team and someone external. We have had healthy arguments where they would put a lot of effort to arrive at a higher quality answer than quick answers. They championed design ownership and made sure our timelines (which were aggresive) were met, yet never settled for something that would not be the best globally.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Since they are a new firm, I could see there is initial struggle to manage a lot of work at once, especially while dealing with multiple clients. There were a couple of minor incidences where I saw they were extremely worked up. Having dealt with startups for most part of my life, I understand that this is the journey every new entrepreneur goes through. You say yes more often that you say no. But I am glad that the 8-9 months we spent, I saw they improving massively on this front and they helped bring good project management structure to our design and product org as well.