Underdog Mumbai’s Vikram Gaikwad and Vistasp Hodiwala team up with Roy Menezes and Pushkarraj Mehta to launch new agency Centrick

Four different minds (and their teams) get together to create solutions for brands that are based on data, audience sentiments, diverse creativity, and precise targeting.

Vikram Gaikwad, Vistasp Hodiwala, Roy Menezes and Pushkarraj Mehta have come together to form Centrick. The mission is not to be the biggest digital agency in the country, but rather the best results-driven marketing agency there can be out there.

This is a team-effort in the truest sense of the term. Gaikwad and Hodiwala, co-founders of Underdog, a six years young communications agency that has gone from strength to strength in its brief but spirited existence decided to team up with Menezes and Mehta to create Centrick.

As online ad spends have for the very first time in history outstrip offline, this is an agency whose time has come. Centrick has been specifically conceived to harness the challenges of this emerging age and it aims to do so by positioning itself on the crossroads of data, technology and creativity. It builds online solutions, on the back of what people want – Google first or Amazon friendly. It creates content that puts sentiment first. It offers experiences that are compelling as much as engaging by putting “people first”. With the economic situation being what it is, finding a sweet spot between the audience and the brands is the need of the hour. And that’s what a data-driven approach primarily delivers.

Menezes and Mehta will be steering Centrick on the back of their diverse experiences with able support from the founders of Underdog.

Menezes has spent 22 odd years with interactive arts and was heading creative for agencies and media houses such as OgilvyOne, Condé Nast, Sideways Consulting, Chrysalis Software and PowerWeave. He has been a part of the team that designed probably one of the world’s first ever web banking interface in the early 2000’s and made a virtual dog reply to your questions about a brand with hyper-personalisation, He has led teams that have created innovative and magical experiences by connecting desktop browsing with mobile experiences for brands such as Audi and Hippo and delivered content like “The Magic Of Glass” for Borosil, that reached the hearts of over 3 million people in just 24 hours with almost negligible media spends.

Mehta on the other hand, specialises in all things key to growing a business online: SEO, SEM, SMM, CRO and analytics, and has built SMB’s into Brands. He has won the Gold at the SMB Heroes Initiative for his work and his case studies have been featured on Digital unlocked – Google’s learning platform for SMB’s.

Menezes, Partner and Chief Creative Officer, said “At Centrick we understand the needs and wants of the audience, then devise a solution around it, implement it, track it, tweak it and measure it and then tweak it again till the brands need is what the target audience truly desires. We believe in putting people first, strategy first, ideas first and satisfaction first. After all, that’s how bespoke solutions are crafted complementing the needs of the audience with its wants. We would also like to stand for a uniquely integrated client-agency culture that is passionately transparent and inherently respectful of each other’s abilities.”

Speaking out on this latest initiative, the founders of Underdog seem no less excited. Gaikwad, Co-founder and CCO said, “At Centrick our idea is to bring back the uncompromising agency culture of days gone by without losing focus on the high-quality immediacy of response that nurtures brands in the ever-evolving digital world of ours. We want to bring back the fun and meaning the creative field has lost out over the years. We felt it was that fun and a clear headspace that sparked some of the most iconic work over the years. We may be wrong. We may be right. But there’s only one way to find out.”

Hodiwala, Co-founder and CCO is equally delighted with the prospect. He added, “Over the past six years, Underdog has already become an established name, so the idea is to be even more nimble and versatile holistically and become the best results-driven solutions provider through a 360 degree understanding of what makes brands tick in the Online2Offline (O2O) space. In Roy and Pushkar, we have found not just the right creative fit, but even more importantly, the right sensibility to pull this off.”

Mehta, the quietest member of this quartet and a founding member of Centrick said,”I don’t think enough is being understood or written about how clients can augment and unlock the value they get from data. It’s the sole discriminating feature across multiple channels and helps devise the measurement framework for the work that is put in, and that is what we at Centrick are most thrilled about.

But we have saved the best for the last. Centrick had a soft launch on December 1, 2019 by already being the agency on record for Bombay Shirt Company the first online custom shirt brand in India and Str8bat, a revolution unlike any other in the world of cricket.”

Akshay Narvekar, Founder, Bombay Shirt Company has this to say on the association, “We were keen to work with Centrick for a number of reasons – they were able to understand the aesthetic of the brand and combine that with analytical insights to drive data led campaigns. Also, their individual track records speak for themselves.”