Rebranding Conquest

We believe a brand is about values. The values that we deeply believe in and the values which represent what we do. We believe that shared values bring people together and get them to work towards a common mission.

We at Conquest identify ourselves as agents of facilitating creation and reinvention. We celebrate genius, determination, contrarian ideas and courage. We assume the responsibility to empower ideas that dare to build the future.

We ourselves have put in a lot of effort to ask ourselves the hard questions when we sit down and introspect after every edition. This yearly practice has led to the exponential growth and maintaining relevance in the fast-changing startup ecosystem by constantly innovating and reinventing ourselves.

From the humble beginning as a business plan competition exclusively for the students of BITS Pilani in 2004, we evolved to International Startup Conclave receiving over 1000 startup registrations culminating with the Grand Finale held in Hyatt Regency, New Delhi in September 2017. The event witnessed India’s top 10 early age startups pitching before India’s biggest investment firms and media houses.

After talking to a large number of startups, mentors, investors, accelerators and after spending a large amount of time discussing and deliberating within our team, we decided to pivot to a newer model to deliver more value to Indian startups and the ecosystem in general. This change needed to be communicated in our logo and the brand in a broader sense.

From when the focus of Conquest as a B-Plan competition was to get the ball rolling we shifted our focus towards helping startups scale analogous to scaling a summit, the logo, and the brand constantly evolved over the years.

The direction of change for our new model was to build a holistic environment where startups could grow with the right focus and external help.

We began with finding the new colors and the ingredients to communicate our values. We played with the shades of blue, with the triangles and with the summits. We were trying to figure out a channel to express our personality. Young, fresh, playful — open to new ideas, going out to try cool stuff and be willing to fail. Bold, deliberate, pragmatic — taking action towards necessary, unveiling and working towards problems that matter.

And we inevitably stumbled upon the orange and the black.

“Orange and black?

Babe, that’s a freaking strong move.”

And once we reached here, we couldn’t stop ourselves to play more. New shades, gradients, and textures. It was hard to stop ourselves from the energy of orange and the fearlessness of the black.

We had countless iterations and deliberations. We played around with line logos and solid logos before eventually moving on to something that stayed. As the designers showed this to the rest of the team, it got a unanimous Aye from everyone present in the room.

A circular logo. It represented holistic and nurturing growth — the values of the new model while still maintaining the connection with our past.

But something felt off. The Q. It just did not feel right. Maybe empty, maybe not consistent — we didn’t know what it was, but it did not feel complete in the logo. And the designers couldn’t suppress the urge to give the Q an accent.

And this just completed it all. Moreover, the accent didn’t just complete the logo, it gave us something more. We stumbled upon the most fundamental element of the new brand. We were now able to communicate our obsession with the creators and our celebration of the desire to build awesome stuff.

The Quill: The fundamental agent of creation.

The Quill embodies the ability to bring ideas to life, which has pushed the human race forward since ages. It can create newer elements. And the new elements thus created can further create more elements or can come together and build more complex systems and ecosystems. This gives the brand a life and power of its own to maintain, grow and stand the tests of the time.

We are proud of the new brand. We feel satisfied with having finally created something that truly communicates our core values, the new major shift in Conquest and a brand that can take care of itself and build upon itself.

Check the new brand in action: www.conquest.org.in