Exclusive: Is Famous Innovations up for acquisition by prospective suitors?

Advertising veteran Raj Kamble’s Famous Innovations is up for acquisition with prospective suitors in the market, according to highly placed industry sources. Storyboard18’s sources also revealed networked agencies are in talks to buy Famous. “Raj also explored the merger of a few agencies. But, that didn’t happen because it was realised that instead of having three small independent agencies, you would rather have one large, still independent agency,” our source revealed.

However, acquisitions in advertising today are running with the thought that there has to be something specific that’s being brought to the table. International as well as Indian networks aren’t looking for agency partners, they are looking for specialist partners. For example, influencer marketing based agencies, AI-based agencies, web-tech, blockchain, e-commerce are all interesting in terms of acquisition. But, if it's a creative agency then all of a sudden, large networks are unsure, an indie ad agency founder told us.

Storyboard18 also spoke to Kamble regarding the situation. He revealed that he has been in talks with suitors. “Talking to people doesn’t mean selling. No papers have been signed yet.” He also added that he is willing to sell and if someone makes him an offer he can’t refuse, then why not? “I am talking to three parties, including independent companies and one network but nothing has been finalised yet. No papers have been signed,” Kamble said. “You never know where these meetings go. So, I wish to not name the parties yet,” he added.

He also said that any deal like this one will take about a year, including all due diligence. “I have not signed any papers but we are talking to three people.”

Famous Innovations, founded in 2014 by Kamble, has multiple accolades to its name and has worked on campaigns for a number of high profile clients like Adidas, Nestle, Mahindra, Unilever, Burger King, Budweiser, Pernod Ricard, Titan and Flipkart among others.

Kamble started his career at Enterprise Nexus and worked at Lowe. He won half a dozen Clio Awards and three D&AD Silver Pencils in his formative years. At Lowe Howard Spink in London, he worked on notable brands like Unilever, Nestle and Stella Artois. Kamble moved to Lowe, New York after two years in London where for his work, he won One Show Gold and a Gold Lion at Cannes for his work for Stella Artois, Gillette and Light of Life Foundation.

He was then hired by BBDO New York in 2010. Kamble moved back to India in 2013, and joined BBH India as managing partner and CCO. He then decided to start his own independent shop. Famous Innovations was listed among the world’s leading independent agencies in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Like Kamble there have been others before and after him who have left the networked agency ecosystem to start up on their own. Some are still independent, some sold their agencies to networks.

Taproot, an independent creative agency started by creative stars Agnello Dias and Santosh Padhi in 2009 was a successful indie agency to come out of India. It was sold to Dentsu, forming Taproot Dentsu in 2012. Ashish Khazanchis Enormous is another example of an indie setup. Founded in 2013, Enormous too has had a great run. It recently won the Grand Effie for a Jaquar campaign and is still an independent firm. Abhijit Avasthi left Ogilvy as national creative director to start his own company called Sideways Consulting several years ago. Spring Marketing Capital, another marketing services company built on a different model was founded by ex-Lowe Lintas chairman and CCO, Arun Iyer, Vineet Gupta, ex-CEO at DDB Mudra Group and Raja Ganapathy, ex-CMO, Sequoia Capital.