He spent 13 years at BBH, from Brand Partner to Managing Director of BBH India. Then Arvind Krishnan traded the comfort of a global network for Manja, a 16-person independent agency named after the glass-coated kite string built to cut through.

In Episode 36 of The Indian AdGeek, the founder & CEO of Manja talks about the business of building an agency:

📺 Why you pay for 20 years of experience, not 30 minutes of typing: The mechanics of value-based pricing over FTE headcount.

📺 Operating a 16-person "players-only" agency without bloated middle management or redundant approval layers.

📺 How BBH insulated its creative culture after the Publicis acquisition, & what London understood about work that moves products.

📺 Pitching strategy & post-pitch debriefs: Why spending time defining the real problem beats jumping straight to creative answers.

📺 The "Fuck It, Move On" mindset when losing pitches and why ruminating destroys agency momentum.

📺 Pitching disruptive work (like Urban Company's "Filter Toh Pagal Hai") to risk-averse clients without hard-selling.

📺 The future of Indian indies: Will tech giants like TCS or Wipro eventually acquire creative agencies the way Accenture bought Droga5?

📺 Why agency equity isn't about revenue or headcount, but about creating giants and leaving a lasting cultural imprint.

www.TheIndianGeek.com

Vishal on X - https://x.com/vishal1mehra

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/vishal1mehra/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishal1mehra/

The Indian AdGeek streams on all podcast apps.

#IndianAdGeek #Manja #AdvertisingPodcast #ArvindKrishnan #IndianAdvertising #BBH #AgencyLife