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Nitin P R

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Nitin P R

CEO

NPR Design

Nitin P R is a member of:

- Expert

Brief about company, offerings and foundation of the company

We are a digital design and marketing agency. Our offerings encircle consultation, concept, design and development for a company’s identity, branding, web and digital marketing activities. I found the company in the year 2007.

Most critical decision

Well, that would be choosing to continue my tenure in my father’s company or take my freelance profession to a more organized set up. I chose the latter with the support and love of my family and well-wishers. I completely believe and am sure all of us do, that a passion and a talent must never go in waste. My father believed in my work and my interest in the marketing and advertising domain and agreed for a final go ahead. To add, there is still much more I need to explore. Learning never ends.

Three big lessons/ mistakes encountered while building company

1)Never hire talent that does not walk the talk.2)“We will get you more work” is a fad. Never undervalue your work price.3)Always innovate. A thought churning in your head is probably under final testing in the other end of the world. Keep that head rolling with new ideas and never be afraid to try them out. What is the worst that can happen?

Motivation and Drives factor

Design and Media Blogs (loads to explore and learn), TV Shows (FRIENDS and the list is endless) and my niece (she is one super positive angel in my life). Not to forget, my attachment to everything digital.

Way of choosing my people

The longing to be associated to one of India’s most creative agencies is a thrill in it self to every candidate joining the company. We spot right talent by carefully understanding their past work and experience. Nurturing and teaching during their work course is essential for the company and the brand. Good work done in the agency inspires everyone and not to forget our brainstorming sessions are worth a visit.

Experience of reaching out to potential investors

We never did actually reach out to investors yet. We have ploughed back company profits to further expand the agency. Though, we welcome interested prospects that have the love for innovation fused in with excellent design. One thing we learnt while pitching for our parallel web project (lemonluck.com) is that touching a pain point of prospective customers does give way to a more structured and doable business plan which does grab an investor’s attention.

My role at different dimensions as the company evolved

A freelance graphic and web professional to a Creative Director, Business Development Head, Chief Marketing Officer, Client servicing manager and Team Leader. All these roles define my part in NPR Design. I give my teams the freedom to experiment but they have my attention at all times. Even though each team has their respective account executives and leaders now, they know they have my inputs when they need it.

As a leader how I make sure that I am connecting the right dots

Experience makes a big difference. We do have a very long way ahead of us. But our teething years have taught us to identify the red dots from the blue ones, separate the same and pave the way to perfection and brilliant service.

My thoughts related to entrepreneurship/ leadership and management

1)Follow your dream.2)Train your team well and then trust them.3)Make sure all the legal and official formalities related to the company and its finances are sorted4)Always prepare a work contract. Fine print is a life savior. Also make sure you follow the print5)Love what you do and Do what you love.

Best company I admire globally

O & M: Because of how creative they are, their way of handling client accounts, their pattern of creative thinking and execution and their never-ending practice to innovate and then making the world believe that innovation with all its glory and reasoning. Brilliant.

Advice for fellow entrepreneurs

1)It is never too late to begin.2)Nothing replaces planning and hard work.3)Never be afraid to approach an opportunity.4)Be proud of your work and achievements but never be super arrogant. It might smash you down.5)Gratitude is “ The Totally Cool” attitude.

Risks involved in business and way of addressing

Every Business does bring in its share of risks and opportunities. Luckily for me, the opportunities have out-numbered the risks at various stages of my agency’s inception and existence. To name a few risk.1)A lot of competition in the market. More agencies providing the same service with probably better connections, which gives them an upper hand to winning an account. However, again the opportunity or I should say strength my agency withheld was the quality and quantity of work we have done in various domains of digital design and development. At the end of the day, a decent price and excellent deliverable takes the cake. Rest is History.2)The filtering of inquiries. One may never find out if an inquiry is genuine of just a cheap trick by a competitor. I would not oppose such practice but yes it does stand as a very common but potent risk. Solution? Just filter and filter well. That comes with experience. After a couple of fake inquiries, one tends to catch up ;) We did too. Moreover, our pricing depends on the kind and scope of work involved. No rack rates as such.

Some of the difficulties faced while building product/ solution

When we started off, we were better known as just design experts. We outsourced a lot of our development work to other freelancers and friends, as we did not have a full time developer on board. So the disadvantage of distance and lack of communication was quite a pain in the neck. Now, however we have a design and development team on board and our work is as smooth as it can be, touch wood. I believe that the learning period in every establishment should not be a walk in the fields. Challenges and difficulties help shape up the business to function much better. We were lucky those difficulties were encountered in the inception period of the agency.

Different actions if I rebuild my company from scratch all over again

Will have a more unique branding. Well, we are under the process of changing our current branding to something more innovative. However, our current logo and branding was made in the morning at 4 am in the year 2007 and approved in exactly 30 seconds (by me). Our Business cards have rocked since 2007 to now. Everyone we have met till date is still preserved them.PS: Our new branding does leak two words… #madhatter and #magic

Unique about my way of motivating troops

The whole idea of making them believe in yourself and the company’s goals and objectives but in a more fun way. Small talk and humor also does it. Nothing can be achieved with perfection without a dedicated and loyal team. I have mine, so I guess my motivation does produce fantastic results. The whole Management hierarchy has a totally different placement in our agency and I am proud of the same.

The challenges and lessons learnt to get first customer

Our first job was a logo design for a real-estate portal’s identity design. We achieved that 1 lead by distributing over 1000 flyers in newspapers one Wednesday morning. That 1 logo design job that we did for Rs. 1500 taught us a more professional and calm way to handle work and deliver nothing but quality. We must have spent more than 50% in travelling to the client’s office. But it was worth it. Nothing teaches better than the job itself.