[This article is a part of our First Person series, in which people share their stories and thoughts about their startups, lives and careers.]
There are years that ask questions and years that answer back. A couple of years back I was faced with a question central to my professional life, at the very onset of it and that was, “How could the void in communication in both B2B and B2C marketing leading to failure in engagement be addressed?” As I was welcomed to the sphere of IT, the challenges hit me in the face. Companies struggling to get their message across clients and employees alike, internal communication taking a hit because of the intricacies that include in creating art that serves a purpose, I realized how sensitive the message to the medium is.
The year is 2016, countless content smiles and brilliant inclusive projects later, I probably get my answer. Yes we can bridge the gap; Pichkaari holds testimony to that. I remember working closely with the HR department and the directors of my previous employment with CenturyLink where I had the opportunity to be a part of initiatives for CSR, appraisal and recruitment drives along with many other employee engagement initiatives. I was also involved in working with other advertising agencies and design studios for marketing communication which had the potential of significantly influencing a huge number of customers and also the client base.
Garnering ample insights on how each medium of communication contributes and is exclusive to ways of effective communication, how each of the seemingly trivial aspects of typography, colors, layout actually penetrate the conscious mind into the depths of the unconscious and affect audience behavior, I had made up my mind on what my calling was: facilitating effective communication by combining empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success.
I found myself working with Sebastian, an individual gifted with a crazy flair for illustrations. His mastery of the art of storytelling through illustrations helped us solve a plethora of user engagement problems as he set forth with his canvas of imagination. Time and again, it proved to be a visual treat as Sebastian effortlessly shredded every idea of its complexity with telling sketches. Our collaboration triggered the indispensable need for Design Thinking for everything we create.
To create meaningful innovations, you need to know your users and care about their lives. Engaging with people directly reveals a tremendous amount about the way they think and the values they hold. Good designs are built on a solid understanding of these beliefs and values.
We were completed by Priyanka, a painter known for her keen aesthetic sense and creativity with colors and designing. Me being the UX person, Seb being the illustrator and Priyanka being the artist, we complimented each other to conceive the brainchild of ours’- Pichkaari. Priyanka’s insights proved crucial to the meandering journey of Pichkaari with years of fine art experience in her kitty.
Our services stem from treading the path less travelled. So how do we leap into the unknown and create something that the client will feel good about? We are a lot of enthusiasts who holds the quality of our services above everything else. We get sleepless nights when we deliver something that does not do justice to our high standards of quality, trickling right to the handpicked details. This obsessive compulsion over quality sometimes gets on our nerves. But we will sleep better knowing we have done justice to our client’s requirements and our creative genes. We just refuse to be a part of the by the crowd that has been saturated with mediocrity that even the creators of the content are unable to apprehend how little value they are providing. We believe in our clients since we know that they share our fixated obsession over quality.
Pichkaari’s journey has had humble beginnings with creating an employee engagement drive for a Fortune 100 company for starters but ever since there has been no looking back. We have dabbed at UX, branding, marketing, strategy, web design and much more which has always kept us in the company of a vast number of Start Ups, enterprises, brilliant minds and much zanier creative work. So I firmly believe that this child of ours will grow up to be a giant force that would create a niche for smart, intelligent and wise design. Join us as we chart new territories in the far west lands of design thinking and share it with the world.
[The author of this post is Vikas Jaiswal, the co-founder and CEO of Pichkaari.]