Scale to sustainability: Independent digital agencies reset growth playbooks in 2025

2025 marked a clear inflection point for India’s independent digital agencies as the sector entered a more mature phase defined by scale, sharper mandates and heightened accountability. While digital demand remained strong across FMCG, BFSI, beauty, fintech and consumer durables, agencies increasingly operated in a tougher environment shaped by margin pressure, outcome-linked pricing and rapidly evolving brand expectations.

Industry leaders described the year as one of measured, disciplined growth rather than easy momentum. Client wins and expanded scopes continued, but growth came with tighter procurement scrutiny, shorter engagement cycles and a visible shift towards project-led problem solving alongside long-term partnerships. With large independents such as Schbang, Grapes Worldwide, LS Digital, Gozoop, SoCheers and Puretech now commanding significant revenues and complex client portfolios, the Indian digital agency ecosystem has firmly evolved into a multi-player, capability-driven market.

That shift is reflected in how agencies performed through the year. Schbang closed 2025 at close to ₹300 crore in revenue, driven by steady topline growth while tightening operational efficiencies to strengthen margins at scale. Grapes Worldwide saw disciplined growth across topline and profitability, with AI embedded organisation-wide to improve productivity, consistency and margin protection, alongside a selective approach to client additions. For LS Digital, the year was defined by “integration at scale”, with healthy topline and bottomline growth, over 30% YoY expansion in enterprise verticals, deeper multi-solution client relationships, and the deployment of 40+ AI-driven products.

At SoCheers, growth in the current financial year was led by an expanding and higher-quality client base, with revenue rising faster than headcount as hiring turned more strategic. Gozoop Group delivered broad-based growth despite longer decision cycles, posting 30% YoY topline growth, 25% bottomline growth and an 18% rise in net clients, underpinned by a stable business mix. Puretech Digital shifted focus from volume to depth, with growth driven by stronger client integration, eastern market expansion post-merger with Genesis, and partner-led engagements rooted in relevance and trust.

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Rise of project-based mandates

Beyond topline numbers, one of the most visible structural shifts in 2025 was how agencies recalibrated the mix between retainers and project-based mandates. Not all agencies leaned equally into ‘projectisation’. Gozoop saw more retainer-led growth over project-based work, a deliberate shift aimed at strengthening long-term cash flows amid economic uncertainty and broader market volatility. “A significant part of our revenue growth came from retainers, across both Gozoop Creative and HAWK. This validated our strategy of prioritising long-term partnerships over short-term projects and gave us a lot more predictability and stability as a business,” said Rohan Bhansali, Executive Chairman and Co-founder, Gozoop Group.

At the same time, project-led mandates continued to gain momentum across parts of the industry. Siddharth Devnani, Co-Founder & COO at So Cheers, said that while retainers continue to anchor the business, project-led mandates have been steadily rising over the past two to three years and are now influencing hiring and team structures, with project revenues expected to eventually match retainers. He added that this shift aligns naturally with the agency’s entertainment-led work, where movie launches, OTT shows and campaign spikes are inherently project-driven.

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“What’s changed is that this project mindset has expanded beyond entertainment. We’re seeing FMCG and other sectors also increasingly opt for campaign-led engagements. In fact, one of our long-standing FMCG retainer clients has recently moved us to a retainer-plus-project model,” Devnani added.

For others, the rise in project-based work reflects a broader change in how brands approach agency engagement. Prasad Shejale, Founder and CEO, LS Digital, said, “We’ve seen a significant uptick in project-based mandates, and we embrace it. The world is moving toward a ‘problem-solution’ economy. Brands today have specific, high-stakes business problems—whether it’s a UI/UX overhaul or a custom AI tool—and they want defined entry and exit criteria with measurable ROI.” He added that the agency’s integrated model enables it to enter client relationships through specialised project mandates and progressively evolve into long-term strategic partnerships as it addresses deeper business needs.

Meanwhile, Grapes Worldwide sees the rise in project-based work as a healthy shift towards more strategic, campaign-led mandates, while evolving retainers into deeper, partnership-driven engagements. Schbang said retainers remain core, but AI and stronger in-house teams are creating more opportunities for high-impact project work that drives rapid transformation. For Puretech, projects now act as a proving ground for alignment and accountability, with continuity following naturally once outcomes are established.

Evolving brand expectations

These changes in engagement models are closely tied to how brand expectations themselves have evolved. One of the biggest reasons brands prefer independent agencies today is agility. In digital, agility is critical because the environment changes extremely fast, whether it’s social media trends, algorithm shifts, cookie-less planning, or the increasing reliance on first-party data.

According to Sini Magon, Chief Operating Officer and Global Partner at Grapes Worldwide, 2025 saw brands raise the bar, increasingly expecting independent agencies to operate as senior strategic partners rather than execution vendors. “That means business context, sharper judgment, faster turnaround, and direct senior ownership. Agility is still a key advantage for independents, but only if it comes with rigour, accountability, and proactive thinking. Clients want agencies who can shape narratives over time, anticipate risk early, and deliver outcomes, not just output,” she added. 

AI is also redefining how brands approach agencies. Indraneel Gawde, Chief Business Officer at Schbang, explained that brands today expect leaner, more specialised teams. He said, “With AI tools significantly reducing manual effort, the emphasis has shifted to sharper thinking, deeper expertise, and faster decision-making rather than large execution-heavy setups.”

Moreover, basic expectations such as cost efficiency or agility are no longer sufficient. Kedar Kulkarni, SVP – Growth and Strategy at Puretech Digital, said brands now expect independent agencies to bring deep expertise, be part of backend decision-making, and help shape how performance and profitability are defined and measured. 

He highlighted, “We’re no longer just marketing collaborators. Independent agencies are increasingly part of the business decision cycle. There’s also a clearer understanding now that strong independent agencies are challenger partners to traditional mainline models often with more depth, more specialized skill sets, and teams designed for today’s complexity rather than yesterday’s structures.”

Use of AI

Underlying many of these shifts is the rapid operationalisation of AI. AI has moved from experimentation to execution for independent agencies, becoming integral to workflows across creative production, media planning, analytics and optimisation. While automation has improved speed and efficiency, agencies emphasise that strategic thinking, judgement and outcome ownership remain firmly human-led.

Across agencies, AI has shifted from a peripheral tool to a core operational layer. Gozoop said AI is embedded across creative, production, planning and even HR and finance, delivering efficiency gains including a roughly 25% rise in revenue per employee despite stable headcount. Schbang said AI now underpins everything from strategy and copy to faster design and video workflows, with its upcoming AI Suite positioned as a central intelligence layer for brand decision-making. Puretech Digital highlighted a deliberate, practical approach, embedding AI into analysis, decision support and automation to improve the speed and quality of decisions rather than replace talent.

At Grapes Worldwide, AI adoption is driven top-down to compress time-to-insight, strengthen planning and automate repetitive tasks, while keeping human judgement central to strategy. LS Digital described itself as a “truly agentic” agency, using AI as an operational backbone to break silos internally and solve business problems externally. Meanwhile, For SoCheers, AI supports faster creative execution and sharper data analysis, but judgement, aesthetics and brand interpretation remain firmly human-led.

As Indian independent digital agencies look beyond 2025, the conversation is shifting away from who is growing to how growth is being sustained. Scale alone is no longer a differentiator. What matters increasingly is the ability to operate with financial discipline, adapt operating models to project-led volatility, integrate AI meaningfully, and stay close to business outcomes rather than campaign outputs.