Shivjeet's passion stems from a burning desire to know and learn more, spilling over into a more confident, and decisive entrepreneur

After binge-watching the Spanish hit series, Money Heist, it hit me that none of the heists could have been successfully pulled off by the main protagonist – a Professor alone. Right from the start, he strategically chose partners with varied skills, which could come together to see his elaborate plans through. This realisation got me thinking, how the same principle can be applied to brands today. Collaborations have become crucial to achieve success. What one can achieve with the right partnership can be nothing short of spectacular, especially in today's market where brands are constantly on the lookout for innovative ways to reach their target audiences.

From hyperlocal to luxury brands, collaborations are the latest currency in great demand. Brands are reaching to younger and younger audiences to stay relevant and expand their influence. There are opportunities to build a new set of brand fans or loyalists, engage them across multiple platforms available today and build goodwill for the future.
With every new such partnerships, brands are able to enjoy the cross-promotional exposure that comes through an engaged community.

For example, as a fitness brand, if we were to partner with an automobile brand to give away a car to one user who has completed a series of high intensity tasks, we can create immense buzz around the importance of staying fit, and rewarding those that do. The automobile brand too stands to create desire in the minds of all the customers trying to achieve the goal and is able to establish itself, with the right messaging on fitness, as one that cares about its customers.

The start-up space in particular, often struggles with promotions on a grand scale, owing to budget constraints. With collaborations, it becomes possible, as brands which are still in the pre-funding stage, and need the most publicity, can partner with other start-ups to mutually promote their products and services. At the end of the day,collaborations are all about mutual growth, and by the entry barriers, and allowing fresh faces to join the marketing space, we are giving those brands with unique propositions, a chance to shine.

Being a fitness platform that is currently promoting walking, we have created growth plans, to reward users for performing full-body workouts. By partnering with a tech company that focuses on developing phone cameras to function like a fitness device, we will use this to identify the kind of workout performed, and customise reward users accordingly.

We believe that flexibility, adaptability, and innovation are the key to success. What has also become crucial to any brand’s marketing activities, are data analytics. In Instagram influencer-brand collaboration, marketers have limited control over organic reach and engagement, owing to a platform’s algorithms.

However, in the case of two-brand collaboration, both presences on multiple platforms can be tapped to provide increased exposure opportunities. With the use of events, blogs, podcasts, social media posts, and signage, both brands stand to gain much from the partnership, which in turn converts to tangible results.

In a country like India, where luxury brands are aspirational, very often people would not spend on the same, owing to budget constraints

In a country like India, where luxury brands are aspirational, very often people would not spend on the same, owing to budget constraints. In such cases, I think collaborations are the solution. The SabyasachiXHM collaboration broke the internet, and is possibly one of the most awaited collections of all time. Through the marriage of the uber luxurious Indian fashion label, with the more affordable fast fashion brand, a larger section of society can now own a Sabyasachi piece in a budget that suits them. This is the power a strong collaboration has.

As a market, India is a young nation, with a large market, whom international brands are vying for. Through collaborations between both local and international companies, it can help decode on expectations from the Indian market, and how to maximum ROIs. While China has already begun working with international labels to curate limited edition fashion lines, we should expect to see the same in India, in the near future.