Carpe Diem! Hisham & Fazaal show us how it’s done in the entrepreneurship game
To be an entrepreneur, you need to seize the moment. Carpe Diem. In Sri Lanka there are many barriers to entrepreneurship. For the most part, parents push their kids to get into a stable job. Job security means everything; the company should be well reputed and provide for a reasonable income. Set in this milieu, Hisham Zulfikar decided to do things differently.
Hisham always believed that design played a huge role in marketing and communications, but felt that there was a lack of creative designs in the industry at the time. While at APIIT, he used his creative ideas to design communications for events. It was during one such event that he found a fellow creative mind — Fazaal Naufer. APIIT cricket 6 was a turning point for Hisham. His event communication work with Fazaal led to the thought that by teaming up with Fazaal, he could start up a design agency. The combination of good friends, in business & computing studies resulted in the birth of a business idea. Since both of them were in university working on projects part time was the only mode they could operate in. It also allowed them time to experiment with their business idea and see how well they could leverage their youthful thinking without taking too much of a risk.
So began Digibrush, the design agency, in 2008. It started off with a single client from Singapore and from 2010 onward took a turn for more serious operations. Both Hisham and Fazaal could now commit 100% to the business, and they decided to push it a notch higher. Hisham took on the business development angle while Fazaal focused on crafting a process to design creative communications. In 2011, with the world moving very heavily towards digital marketing, Digibrush transformed into a fully fledged design agency with a focus on digital media marketing. To us at APIIT, this isn’t a surprise as Hisham was known to have conducted many successful event campaigns at APIIT, one of which is Tantalize, where he was the co-chairperson in 2009.
Digibrush is now an agency with around 30 dedicated individuals, working on making many companies look good in the digital media sphere. Getting to this has not been a walk in the park. Hisham while speaking to us reflected on the challenges they faced. One huge challenge was hiring good designers. When you are an agency that’s all about creating good designs, having the right people is crucial. While Sri Lanka had a large number of computing professionals, it had only a handful of great designers. These designers too got picked by the larger agencies.
Hisham and Fazaal decided to approach this human capital challenge in a different way. There were plenty of budding designers who need training. They crafted a process that would help hone the skills of these designers with no experience and took it upon themselves to work the hours to perfect their work. This strategy began to bear fruit and they found some skilled individuals coming out of this process. Their pool of designers now come from various backgrounds, be it software engineering, art or music — anyone with an eye and passion for design. They’ve been trained to meet the needs of this demanding industry.
Today Hisham and Fazaal can sit back and and reflect on how well their risk taking has paid off. To date 90% of their clients come through recommendations. They are a successful and award winning design agency. Digibrush was awarded Silver A’ Design Award for Graphics and Visual Communication Design in 2016. Some of their team members also represented Sri Lanka at Cannes Young Lions. Within a short span of time in this competitive field Digibrush services over 20 brands across various industries. This young team has made their mark.
Congratulations Hisham, Fazaal & the Digibrush Team. You have shown how innovative and practical thinking can make a business grow from strength to strength. As you move towards celebrating your 10th year in business in 2018, we hope you continue to bring novelty to the digital marketing world.
