Vedanta is one of the world’s largest natural resource companies. It is global and diversified – operating across multiple commodities and four continents – with a track record of consistent growth. An important stakeholder in India’s progress, Vedanta prides itself in demonstrating resilience through the cycle. Vedanta’s 2015-16 Annual Report explained how the Company withstood a crippling global slowdown and crash in commodity prices. It outlines how the Company navigated this cyclical downturn to emerge stronger and protect its free cash flows.
A clear picture
The annual report highlighted the Company’s strong portfolio along with its relentless focus on operational excellence. Critical sections such as the business model, KPIs and a strategic framework were defined clearly for investors and readers to understand the operations better. A detailed account of the market environment and performance across businesses was provided in the operating review for those wanting to deep-dive.
Through a comprehensive coverage of the sustainability and corporate citizenship initiatives, the report provides validation of Vedanta’s licence to operate.
Narrative highlighting resilience of portfolio. Lucidly explained business model for clarity.
Value through action
The challenging operating environment notwithstanding, Vedanta outlined the actions it is taking to assure stakeholders, protect value and leverage emerging opportunities for the future. The vision and way forward were
articulated clearly in the management messages.
Stark imagery and well-structured layouts accentuated the focus on transparency and honest communication. This design philosophy straddled both the print and digital versions, providing ease of information access.
"Our annual report provides a detailed insight into our strategy, governance philosophy and value creation mindset. An accurate representation of the business reality allows investors to understand the ways in which Vedanta is working to meet its strategic objectives."
Tom Albanese, Chief Executive Officer, Vedanta
Calling Quess Corp’s highly successful business model complex would be an understatement. Founded in 2007, Quess is India’s leading integrated services provider across IT staffing, industrials, facility management, security solutions, skill development and general staffing. What sets Quess apart is its acquisitive growth strategy (16 in a decade) and its management’s ability to derive effortless synergies, creating a unique business model that celebrates diversity.
The moving parts
When Quess came up with its first public issue in 2016, it was one of the most successful in recent history with the IPO seeing an over subscription of 147 times. Post listing, the management wanted to reassure investors about Quess’ performance, strategic direction and growth potential. Our primary challenge was to identify the overarching theme that binds so many moving parts.
Behind Every Business
We came up with the ‘Behind Every Business’ idea to highlight the Company’s ability to identify core businesses in supposed ‘non-core’ activities. We placed them on the report’s back cover to clearly illustrate the Company’s role in its four major business verticals while celebrating its ‘Vision, Values, Results’ on the front cover. We deployed a clean, no-frills design to allow the numbers to speak for themselves, thereby helping deliver actionable insights.
Vedanta Limited is one of the world's largest diversified natural resources company with a large base of low-cost, long-life assets. Given its scale of operations and presence across industries, Vedanta is a play on India’s still unravelling growth story. After narrating Vedanta’s resilient journey through adverse global macroeconomic conditions in its 2015-16 Annual Report, the management needed to reassure stakeholders and future investors about the Company’s strategic direction and potential. We decided to include an ‘Investment Case’ in the 2016-17 Annual Report, titled, Stronger, Smarter, Sustainable, that not only captured the Company’s strengths but also highlighted its continued attractiveness as an investment.
A balanced investment case
Our experience in addressing stakeholder information requirements over the years and across sectors enabled us to present Vedanta in ways that would lead to investment decisions. The investment case was thus a thorough and balanced view of the external macro environment and how Vedanta was placed in the dynamic market scenario. We used case studies to narrate the theme stories and analysed their impact on the business.
Connecting on a meaningful level
Each theme story was anchored to Vedanta’s key initiatives, including efforts made towards operational excellence, cost optimisation, business restructuring, innovation, waste minimisation, biodiversity, and community upliftment projects. An eclectic mix of colourful human imagery was used to present the theme. The design flow ensured effortless navigation across the report, with seamless integration of pictorials covering assets, products, communities, workers and
other stakeholders.
Prestige Estates has created a legacy of delivering world-class, premium projects. Spread across major South Indian cities, the Company straddles the construction industry across residential, commercial, retail and hospitality verticals.
A clear reflection of brand identity
With the real-estate industry experiencing radical regulatory changes, Prestige has not only been able to retain its premium position, but has also expanded its market share. Our objective was to ensure Prestige’s annual reports reflect the Company’s exceptional track record of delivering on promises.
In 2014-15, when the real-estate sector in India was going through an uncertain phase, Prestige stood its ground. To reflect this unwavering commitment, we chose ‘Pride. Passion. Promise.’ as the theme for its 2014-15 Annual Report. For the 2015-16 Annual Report, we chose ‘Building on Fundamentals. Delivering on Promise.’ to demonstrate the brand’s iconic projects and charted growth path, while highlighting the improving market conditions and growth opportunities. The theme ‘Building on a Legacy of Trust’ accorded continuity to this incredible story of commitment in the
2016-17 Annual Report.
Opulent design. Comprehensive content.
The design opulence mirrored Prestige’s focus on the premium segment. We devised a comprehensive content strategy to present the status of each project and the operational and financial metrics. Messages from the Chairman and senior management were crafted to produce a well-articulated view on the economic and operational activities, while theme stories outlined Prestige’s focus on customers, strategic priorities and long-term sustainability.
Titan has been synonymous with style statements in India, initially with watches and then with jewellery, eyewear and fragrances. Backed by the Tata group, Titan has always been one of the most sought-after lifestyle brands in the past three decades of its existence. In an era of abundant lifestyle choices, Titan’s success stems from its ability to evolve with the rapidly changing consumer tastes and preferences.
To capture Titan’s evolution from a style statement to a personality statement, we decided to adopt a more visual approach to communication for its 2016-17
Annual Report.
Aptly titled ‘Dynamic by Design’, the report highlighted the brand’s offerings, while building thematic stories around its employees, artisan support programme, social ventures and digital initiatives.
The report also provided an insight, through a dedicated spread, into how the external environment was becoming more conducive to the growth of organised lifestyle brands.
The visual appeal was elevated by a generous use of smart iconography, eye-catching product images, and photographs of the brand ambassador in the
design phase.
This helped bring out the contemporary character of the Company that’s deeply entrenched in the Tata group's ethos of delivering quality products at attractive
price points.
Hero MotoCorp began over three decades ago with a bold vision of bringing world-class mobility solutions and technologies to India. The Company has since emerged as one of the world’s largest manufacturer of two-wheelers, serving millions of people globally.
The theme of its 2016-17 Annual Report, ‘One World. One Hero’, celebrated the Company’s commitment to strengthening its brand eminence globally. The Company used the report to communicate its global stature to its growing stakeholder audience and to convey its values and way of doing things innovatively.
Speaking to a global audience
From manufacturing excellence to powering innovation and demographically oriented product launches to expanding distribution networks, the Company continued to explore new frontiers and set higher
industry benchmarks.
The Annual Report articulated the strategies, challenges and opportunities towards achieving its objectives. The report’s content architecture and design philosophy provided readers with a sense of Hero’s transcontinental prominence and scale.
A cohesive look
The treatment was aligned to the brand’s overall look, with accent on realistic imagery that represented the Company’s stakeholder fraternity. We also made generous use of iconography, brand colour and infographics.
The report’s print version was elegant, comprehensive and well-structured, while the online version offered easy navigation and readability to engage readers of
all categories.
Sterlite Technologies – from a manufacturing play to a specialty business with presence across the entire telecom value chain – has catapulted itself to the forefront of the ‘Digital India’ mission. In the process, the Company has reduced debt significantly, improved return ratios and created a high cash-generating business with a strong growth outlook. Today, Sterlite Technologies is one of the world’s leading — and India’s only — vertically integrated optical communication products, services and software companies.
Sterlite Technologies has been in a transformation phase for the past few years. In the 2016-17 Annual Report, the management needed to ensure that the stakeholders clearly understood the restructured business model and its ability to respond to a dynamic market scenario. Simply put, the report needed to elucidate the story of transformation, forward movement and a sense of purpose.
We deployed the ‘Transforming Everyday Living’ theme to celebrate this central idea and the digital transformation wave sweeping India. We used realistic imagery and iconography to bring to life the Company’s core pillars of technology and innovation, extensive customer engagement, wide talent pool and a vibrant learning culture. The report also highlighted the Company’s core business imperatives with social and environmental concerns of the communities it works with. The smart interplay of imagery, iconography and information graphics reinforced Sterlite’s key operational and financial strength, flagship projects, risk governance and achievements towards designing, building and managing smarter networks.
Welspun India Limited (WIL), a part of the $3 billion Welspun Group, is among the world’s largest home textile manufacturers. The objective of the 2016-17 Annual Report was to focus on WIL’s business capabilities and how it was scaling them to strengthen its ‘Customer First’ philosophy.
Catalysing long-term growth
We began by identifying the key strengths that form the backbone of WIL’s growth strategy. This led to clearly defining the efforts of the management and employees, as well as the Company’s business strategy in customer centricity, collaboration, technology and inclusive growth. The theme ‘Raising the Bar’ further elaborated how the Company was building sustainable leadership through innovation, patents, brands, and new markets, channels
and products.
A robust business model
The outcome was a clear expression of the Company’s core business strategy, Welspun 2.0, aimed at creating customer delight through innovative offerings and building a robust business. The report highlighted how the Company was consistently transforming and raising the bar internally to enhance stakeholder value.
SBI Life is among India’s principal life insurance firms. The Company is a joint venture between India’s largest bank, State Bank of India and the leading global insurance company BNP Paribas Cardif. The success of SBI Life lies in its focus on business excellence achieved through acceleration and positive transformation.
Customer-first strategy
The 2016-17 Annual Report was its maiden pre-IPO report and thus assumed greater significance. The IPO went on to become one of the largest in recent times. To reinforce the insurer’s operational excellence and staggering financial performance while staying focussed on delivering exceptional customer experience, we chose ‘Progress Based on Satisfaction’ as the theme. The report highlighted SBI Life’s achievements, driven by customer-centric solutions and industry best-practices while underlining a steep growth trajectory aligned to its aspirations of becoming the industry leader.
Clarity and insight
The overall design approach showcased SBI Life’s commitment towards supporting and sustaining lives. Generous use of brand colour and iconography illustrated the Company’s core values of trust and care. The content was neatly structured and presented in a format that emphasised SBI Life’s core strengths and strategic priorities.
Pfizer is one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in India. In 2016, the Company decided to reach out to employees through their newsletter, Crucible, with a special edition dedicated to its field force, celebrating their successes and perseverance. We were required to follow their visual brand guidelines in terms of colour, illustration style and typography to be in line with the Company's global branding.
While many rules of the game were set, we managed to create something refreshing and engaging for Crucible, their in-house newsletter. Each section was colour-coded and fleshed out with a specific design language in line with the content. For the 'In focus' section, each article was presented as legend-speak, layouts were treated with a heavy Pfizer Purple colour scheme (suggesting royalty) and text blurbs were presented as historical 'doctrines' or 'code'. The cover was the result of a creative exercise that involved many of the top leaders of Pfizer India. In a fun photography session, portraits of them holding a blank placard were shot. While designing the composite cover, we imposed the words 'Field Force is Special' on the placards. The idea was to push the message that 'the field force is special', which was wholeheartedly endorsed by all.
We led a design and content approach that acknowledged the commitment of the field force. The inside pages were designed keeping with the idea of delivering a vibrant and celebratory spirit. Each section had a different colour and was aligned with the content. The issue was well-received and appreciated for its dynamic layout and bright content.
The Art of Wealth Creation is a book which addresses the equity investment process in wealth creation very innovatively. Raamdeo Agrawal, co-founder of the Motilal Oswal Group has put forth the intricacies of his investment philosophy – QGLP and his experiences around wealth creation over a 21-year timeline.
The art of wealth creation can be mastered only over time. At one level, wealth creation is a science - years of meticulous research and analysis of several complex aspects of business and stock markets. Yet, at the next level, wealth creation transforms into an art – distilling the science to discover the essence. This book discusses these essential mantras that went into the formulation of various investment strategies.
We worked with the team to consolidate and articulate case studies to depict the underlying strategies of this philosophy in a language that appealed to the experienced HNI investor and an average reader. To bring QGLP to life we developed a strong design identity and visual narrative that helped break away from the template format of a standard fact-laden document. The book is available on Amazon.
"Our Wealth Creation Studies are steps on the wisdom path – to deeply and clearly understand what it takes to make money in the stock markets. In each Study, we first analyse the last 5 years to know which stocks made handsome money for investors, and why."
Raamdeo Agrawal, MD & Co-Founder, MOFSL
